Baby Beluga is a song I thought only my family knew. I thought this about a lot of different of things actually. Probably had something to do with living far from extended family on a dairy farm that kept us hopping. We didn't have time to investigate if other families knew Baby Beluga. We were too busy singing it or Phantom of the Opera in the back alley while we milked. (My teenage self is mortified at this admission.) Or maybe it was just because by the time I would have wondered if other people knew Baby Beluga, I wouldn't have cared to discuss Baby Beluga. Boys and clothes and magazine quizzes were so much more important and interesting.
Whatever the reason, it was a revelation to realize that oodles of people know Raffi and Baby Beluga. He actually didn't sing it just for us.
But it felt like he did.
Living in Alaska, beluga whale pods were something you saw. (If you were other people that is. I never managed to see one.) There is a turnout on the Turnigan Arm called Beluga Point, just a half hour south of Anchorage where people often saw them. Belugas are very Alaskan. Not surprisingly, I found my first copy of this book in a second hand store in Eagle River after our first baby was born. We sang it to pieces, quite literally. Gilbert, our singing boy, adored this book when he was a baby. It was the first book he would sit and listen to all the way through. We sang it over and over and over. So we had to buy a new copy. And now this copy is starting to look shabby because, Elsie, the baby of the family, insisted on it quite often too.
It is well loved.
I love, love, love the artwork in this book.
Sea creatures of Alaska
Baby Beluga and Mommy Beluga
Oh the colors! and the light shining through the water...!
"Curled up snug in your water bed" under the northern lights.
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