Through the Darkening Sea*

By Claire Saxby & Peter Cheong

Reviewed by Zewlan Moor

Claire Saxby is the master of lyrical non-fiction picture books. She has published many, including Emu, Koala, Kookaburra, Secrets of the Saltmarsh, and Volcano, across multiple publishers, collaborating with many of Australia’s finest illustrators. This latest collaboration is with Peter Cheong, a rising star, published both in Australia and internationally.

Cheong is a good choice for Through the Darkening Sea, about a whale’s journey down into the depths of the ocean. This picture book is rendered in acrylic and watercolour textures, digitally arranged. His previous book, Every Night at Midnight, showed his ability to use black and navy to great effect.

This is demonstrated in the endpapers, where the white outlines of dolphins, dugongs, jellyfish and fish swim alongside the red outlines of sharks and dolphins. These are superimposed over and behind the white outlines, conveying a sense of movement, or perhaps ghostly memory. In the background of the navy sea is a large, black smudge, like charcoal, suggestive of the girth and majesty of a whale.

Saxby’s poetic text sets the scene, “Out in the open ocean, where currents sway wild as wind, where sharks and sea lions widely roam, a whale falls.”

The text is formatted in an elegant serif font, in white, which shows up well against the darkening sea. The formatting is thoughtful, sometimes in couplets, sometimes reflecting the words and meaning, for example:

Down,

         down,

                 down,

                             down,

                                         the whale slips through the darkening sea.

Poetic language, such as assonance, is used: “flit-and-skitter schools of silvery lightfish”. And the alliteration of surprising metaphors pop like bubblegum in the sonorous settling of the whale:

Near where see-through worms explode bioluminescent bombs

and dumbo octopuses with headset fins shapeshift,

the whale comes to rest on the sea floor.

It is not yet the midpoint of the narrative, yet the whale lies dead in the deep.

But in a series of metaphors, the whale is resurrected, by being shown to be “an island … an oasis of plenty … a rare-chance feast.” Moody backgrounds are punctuated by the hot pinks and reds of delectable delights garnishing the banquet, “where jellyfish pulse and comb jellies glow/and dazzling strawberry squid keep one eye up and one eye down”.

The whale carcass becomes a scaffold for worms, and then it is gone, disintegrated into the seabed. The worms feed rays. A mother whale eats krill and births a baby whale. And the cycle of life continues.

This is a must-purchase for libraries and schools, conveying the science of marine biology with the awe-inspiring language and art it deserves.

*A StoryLinks starred review indicating a book of exceptional literary and artistic merit.

Disclaimer: Peter Cheong illustrated my picture book, Nothing Alike. This is an honest and unsolicited review.

Harper Collins AU 2026

Classroom resource

Claire Saxby

Peter Cheong

Zewlan Moor is the author of Nothing Alike, The Bill Dup and Our World: Philippines. Her next book, Say Hello Like an Armadillo is out in the US/UK in June 2026 and Australia in Summer 2026-7. Pre-order or add it to your Goodreads Want To Read shelf now!