Once a Whale Lived Here

How could a whale have once swum in a place where there is no ocean? And what are the clues that tell us about it? This creatively illustrated picture book tells the story of the incredible ways a landscape can change dramatically over time.

Twenty thousand years ago, a glacial ice sheet covered much of northern North America. "But where does the whale come in?" the boy in the story wants to know. Once a Whale Lived Here is the tale of what happened after the ice melted. It’s a story about a huge, meltwater lake that turned hilltops into islands. It’s about a tundra that formed where plants hadn’t grown for thousands of years and an inland sea that was home to belugas and seals. It’s about animals like woolly mammoths, mastodons, and people who hunted them, too.

Based on the late Pleistocene epoch in northeastern North America, Once a Whale Lived Here is a wonder-inspiring peek into geologic history.