Grayson

I like a lot of books. Some I recommend to friends and family, some I give as gifts, and a very few make me act positively evangelical. Lynne Cox's Grayson is just such a book. I was telling people to read it before I had even finished it. I've started counting how many copies I ought to buy for upcoming birthdays. In church this morning I saw a teenaged neighbor who I chat with about books at our lake during the summer. I thought about lending her my copy. I can't wait to start reading it aloud to my kids, although I know my third and fourth graders could probably handle reading it on their own.Grayson is a marvelous and endearing memoir which recounts an encounter the author had when she was a teenager with a baby whale while swimming off the coast of California. It's a story about courage and adventure as Cox swims with the baby whale for hours, helping him find his mother and avoid dying either from collapsed lungs on the shore or of starvation and dehydration in the water. The story is told simply and beautifully. At the same time, Cox describes her experience so clearly that I felt I was in the water with her. I'm no huge nature lover and I certainly hate exercising to the point of tired, much less exhaustion, and yet I was completely charmed by this story of both. Only 153 pages long, it is an easy and enjoyable read that I plan to press on anyone who will listen to me.