“Let’s go off on a pirate walk, / Down by the shining sea.” Thus begins this lovely book (the first from Winnipeg’s 36 Peonies Publishing) that celebrates the simple pleasures of discovering the natural world. Readers are invited to join three young children on a trek to the beach in search of loot such as “alien stones with secret codes,” smooth pebbles, and “scarce wishing stones.” These are not gold coins or jewels, but valuable booty nonetheless to the adventurers. As the children move through a summer day digging for treasure, listening to frogs and birds in a nearby marsh, and finally gazing up at the stars at night, they relish every small wonder that nature offers them.

Debut author Marisa Hochman’s rhyming, lilting text suggests the beat of footsteps and the rhythm of the waves, and although a few of her rhymes seem forced, the poetry generally works well. A shift in metre at the end evokes a dream-like prelude to sleep.

Bette Woodland’s stunning oil-painting illustrations (based on photographs of Hochman’s children) are both nostalgic and filled with light. Slightly blurred, the pictures suggest the shimmer of summer heat and the intensity of memory. The children’s faces are rarely portrayed straight on. Instead we see them looking away, at objects being unearthed in the sand or dragonflies flitting over the marsh. We gaze with them as they dig up shells or drop pebbles off a bridge.

Readers young and old will delight in these details, and likely long for a day at the beach themselves.