August is a time for beaching--relaxing in the sun, being nurtured by sound and feel of waves before being overtaken by the flurry of fall school adjustment.

Part of your beaching may be teaching and children's books provide great resources for researching. The popular children's non-fiction series, Eyewitness Books, has several books that may suit your purpose--including Shell; Seashore; and Fish. Brimming with bright illustrations that nearly leap off the page with dimensionality, these books will make your identification easy. Ages 4 and up. (Knopf)

Seashells of the World, Fishes, Seashores, Seashells of North America and Tropical Fish are all handy pocket references that have colorful pictures to make identification easy and give a brief description as well. (Golden Press)

Anne and Harlow Rockwell write a first non-fiction called At the Beach in which a small girl experiences smells, sights, sounds, feelings and the fun of beach activities like chasing sandpipers, building with sand, and wading with silver fish. Ages 2-4. (Aladdin, 1991)

The rhythms of being by the sea have inspired many great children's books. Probably one of the most well-known children's poems, The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear has been illustrated by Jan Brett. Always sensitive to setting, Ms. Brett gives the poem a tropical backdrop, filling the pages with rich and colorful flora, fauna and fish. Brett fans always open her books with happy anticipation of her creative boarders. In The Owl and the Pussycat, Ms. Brett once again realizes her promise with eloquent margins of coral and shells, bamboos and palms. Ages 1-6. (Putnam, 1991) Bruce McMillan has an impressive reputation for his sparkling photo-illustration. His One Sun: A Book of Terse Verse is a verbal compliment to his imaginative viewing. The book is a series of beach one word couplets made expressive by the textural illustrations and the exhuberance of the small Oriental protagonist who shows us such natural wonders as "Sand/Hand, Lone/Stone, Snail/Trail". McMillan's sense of fun is infectious and after a reading you may feel compelled to drive to the nearest beach, begin rhyming everything around you... or both! Fans of this book should watch for the September debut of Play Day. Ages 1-6. (Holiday House, 1990)

Never has the sea come so alive as in Margaret Mahy's The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate. A respectable (and bored) little man is convinced by his mother to make a trip to the sea. The story is simple, but the imagery abounds until the reader, like the man, is filled with all the wonders of sight, smell and feelings his mother has described as she's told him of the sea. Ages 4-8. (Viking, 1987) Bill Martin, master of silliness in word and situation, once again combines both in the Happy Hippopotami. The rhyming story tells of a busload of happy hippotapoppas, hippotamamas, children and others who frolic on the beach holiday. They rock boats with their dives, brandish squirt guns, eat poppasicles, and perform other assorted acts of ocean amusements. In this book Mr. Martin goes to the limits of word irreverence and the results may you giggle while you read because of the pleasures of their sounds. Illustrations by Betsy Everitt's pastel illustrations show the playfulness and ebullience of species and setting. Ages 2-6. (HBJ, 1991)

Peter Sis' Beach Ball is a perfect entertainment for a small child en route to a seaside holiday. A beach ball bounces through this wordless book leading children to activities of identifying alphabet, colors, numbers, shapes, opposites and animals. Ages 3-6. (Greenwillow, 1990)

Rebecca Jones' Down at the Bottom of the Deep Dark Sea might be a wise book to share with a water fearful child before an upcoming beach adventure. The main character, Andrew, hates all kinds of water, even rain, but worst of all is the deep ocean water. Andrew imagines that at the bottom of the water, many creatures like in wait. When Andrew needs wet sand to complete a day long sand village, he ventures into the water... only to discover that his fears are false and all the ocean is only...wet! Illustrator Virginia Wright-Frierson's art work is quite symbolic as she contrasts her realistic watercolors of the above sea world with her six-year-old daughter's drawings of imagined water beasties. Ages 3-6. (Bradbury, 1991)

Several beach books have a hidden teaching for older children. Dennis Nolan's The Castle Builder is a book composed of hand-drawn dots whose pointillism perfectly represents the sandy setting. The story begins with a small boy building a magnificent castle on the beach. When he shrinks to the size of his doll, he becomes Sir Christopher enters his creation and tames dragons and conquers Black Knights until an enormous wave threatens to vanquish him. Out of no where comes a giant hand that saves him from this fate and weaves together an inner and outer existence where a child must learn to be his own hero. Ages 5-9. (Macmillan, 1987)

A small girl marvels at the wonder of the world on the evening before she and her brother go to the beach and discover a tide pool teeming with life. Author-illustrator Michael Forman allows us to view them as they create One World. They remove small bits of sand and seaweed, shrimp and fish making a new world. All at once they see with new eyes that the original pool has been depleted and they are reminded of how their own world is easily spoiled by man's destruction. Gently repletion the tide pool they find joy in uniting the world into a whole. One further special quality of this book with its global message and soft watery illustrations is that royalties are being donated to Friends of the Earth. Ages 5-9. (Little Brown, 1990)

I have to confess that I am not a non-fiction appreciator, so it takes a lot for me to fall in love with a factual book. But with Lee Wardlaw's Cowabunga: The Complete Book of Surfing, I didn't get past the acknowledgements before I was as hooked as a Ninja turtle on sewer-surfing. Cowabunga is as fast-paced as a the 50-foot tsunami (tidal wave) that Holua rode in 1868... as comfortable with surf-speak as "the Duke" was riding 150-pound sugar pine board ... and as full of fascinating trivia as Hawaii is full of "Bluebirds". Suffice it to say, if a fiction-loving, surfing gringo can find this book awesome and radical, imagine the appeal for someone who hungers for information about the surfing hot spots, etiquette, and the future of the sport! Or someone who enjoys an historical overview filled with anecdotes. Or someone who stoked about surf songs and movies. Or who loves good writing. Or enjoys photographs that bring words more power. Or even the person who wonders about the gnarly terms in this review! Cowabunga seems to have something for everyone. Ages 8 and up. (Avon, 1991)

Many storybook characters who are familiar to children go to the beach. Frank Asch's Bear in Sand Cake (Parent's Magazine Press, 1978); Gene Zion's Harry By the Sea (HarperCollins, 1965); Marc Brown's D.W. All Wet (Little Brown, 1988); Eric Hill's Spot Goes to the Beach (Putnam, 1985) Familiar authors must love the beach too for it becomes settings for books by Eric Carle ( A House for Hermit Crab, Picture Book Studio, 1987); Leo Lionni (Swimmy, Pantheon, 1968) James Marshall's Three By the Sea (Dial, 1981) Margaret Mahy (The Great White Man-Eating Shark: A Cautionary Tale (Dial, 1990) Bill Peet's (Kermit the Hermit Houghton Mifflin, 1965) and Bernard Waber (I Was All Thumbs, Houghton Mifflin, 1975).