Harry by the Sea

Gene Zion's Harry books are all classics, including this one. I greatly appreciate clever stories for young children. The illustrations are good as well. Books like this should make every child a reader.

I read and loved all of the Harry books when I was a child. Harry is a delightful character- he's cute, full of personality, usually well-intentioned, and prone to getting into ridiculous situations. The illustrations are adorable, too. These books still make me laugh when I come across them as an adult! I'd recommend them for any child, whether they love reading or hate it.

There is something about continuing the tradition of reading the Harry Books to my grandchildren. They enjoy knowing that 'daddy' read these books when he was their age.

The "Harry" series by Zion and Graham remain monumental fixed images in the memories of my youth. I teach rhetoric in a Japanese university and stumbled upon these books in the children's reading section of our school's library. My seven-year-old daughter had fished "Harry by the Sea" out of one of the shelves and brought it to me. What a stroke of serendipity! In seeing the cover, I was immediately taken back to my youth. Wow! The story of Harry invited me so often to its pages that I can still remember all of the details. These books represent a brilliant blend of narrative and illustration. Graham's ability to capture the level of expression on the faces of the characters in pastels is amazing. Zion's introduction to simple, compound and complex sentences is a perfect primer for young readers. In their ability to arrest a young reader's attention, these works are easily on the level of Seuss's.

Harry gets into another of his adventures, this time turning into a seaweed monster at the beach. The illustrations are delightful and it's a fun read.