Jacques Cousteau:Champion Of (Earthkeepers Series)

Rating:
Summary: Catherine Reef: Jacques Cousteau: Champion of the Sea
Review: Larry Raymond's illustrations are a highlight of this account of Cousteau's life, written for juveniles. Only one of these pictures rings false (at pp. 8-9; what are the chances of three divers being in a position where neither their hands nor feet show?). Reef does make mention of Jacques' brother's collaboration with the Axis powers during World War II, although his relationship with and subsequent marriage to Francine Triplet are ignored. Conshelf I-III are noted, but there are no references to the Cancellation of Conshelf IV and V or the abandoned Argyronete project.

The book occasionally has a tendency to "telescope" events in a way which, while not exactly incorrect, is misleading. Thus Daniel Cousteau's boss, Eugene Higgens, is mentioned, but Daniel's former employer, James Hyde, is not. Similarly, Reef's description of the testing of the aqualung (at p. 29) makes it appear that all this was done in a single day rather than over a longer period of time (see Axel Madsen, Cousteau: An Unauthorized Biography, at pp. 44-45).

Despite Reef's claim that "[o]ne day, Tailliez brought a pair of swimmer's goggles to the beach so they could see more clearly under water" (at p. 24), there is evidence to the contrary. Axel Madsen states that "[p]osterity would fail to ascertain who of the three new friends first brought goggles to the beach that summer" (see p. 21). Finally, it would have been more accurate when discussing Cousteau's film on Conshelf III to note that it debuted on television because of his failure to line up a distributor, as the helium in the Conshelf atmosphere made the voices of the aquanauts too squeaky (see DuTemple's book on Cousteau, at p. 86).