When Karen Romano Young was growing up, she and her sisters and brother spent most of their time exploring the wetlands down the road. The mill there was home to a woman who taught her about the wetlands and only once yelled at her for destroying frog eggs by stepping on them. These days the author lives near a marsh full of frogs in Bethel, Conn., with her husband, three children, two guinea pigs, a dog, and a cat. As part of her research for this colorful book, she went to sea for a month on the research vessel Atlantis and dived to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in the submarine Alvin to see hydrothermal vents. She says the ocean is "our unknown territory close to home."