Here we are in November — halfway between the stressors of Election Day and Thanksgiving. This may be the perfect time to take a deep breath and sit down with “Life After Whale,” a lovely, spacious picture book that offers up lessons on life and continuity from an underwater perspective.

Bainbridge Island, Washington, author Lynn Brunelle has written dozens of science-oriented books for children. The prolific author turned out another book earlier this year — “Haiku, Ew!: Celebrating the Disgusting Side of Nature” — which I mention if you are already in gift-shopping mode and are seeking to entice a young one in your life (ages 7 to 11) who is resistant to reading.

“Life After Whale” is targeted for ages 7 to 11, too, but I’d deem this a book for all ages.

Brunelle centers her story on the largest animal ever to inhabit our planet: the blue whale. To help us understand the scale of this magnificent creature, the author notes that the whale “would be more than eight stories tall if she walked on land” and helpful visuals show the size of the whale, compared with an elephant, and compared with a child.

This week’s book

“Life After Whale” by Lynn Brunelle

Holiday House — 48 pp — $18.99

In “Life After Whale,” Brunelle tells us about a particular blue whale who, at 90 years of age, is nearing the end of her life. The author handles the whale’s death with beautiful simplicity: “Her breathing slows. Her awareness fades. Her heart quiets and finally stops.”

But the focus of this story is on what happens after the whale dies.

“An entirely new ecosystem will build around this singular whale’s passing,” Brunelle tells us.

“Her body will provide shelter and food for millions of creatures for more than a hundred years. A whole new world will arise. Scientists call this a whale fall.”

The complex, long-term implications of whale falls only began to be understood by scientists four decades ago, when a whale fall was discovered off the coast of California.

Deep-sea technology had advanced enough by then that the site could be visited repeatedly by scientists, who came to understand that every whale fall creates its own long-term ecosystem.

“Life After Whale” shares information about each of those phases, beginning with the length of time it takes a whale carcass even to reach the ocean floor (about a month!). Over time, the carcass attracts different forms of sea life: there’s a mobile scavenger phase, an enrichment opportunist phase, and then the sulfophilic phase — which can last more than a century.

Overlapping that long-term stage is the reef phase, when the whale skeleton, now nibbled and gnawed clean by scavengers, offers a place for animals like anemones and sponges to latch onto so that they can better filter seawater for “marine snow” – the microscopic bits of diatoms and dead animals that comprise their diet.

Adding to the allure of “Life After Whale” are illustrations by award-winning artist Jason Chin, rendered in a restful palette and featuring intriguing creatures of the deep (siphonophores and sea scuds and snotworms, oh my!)