Little Turtle and the Changing Sea: A story of survival in our polluted oceans

by Becky Davies, Jennie Poh (Illustrator)

Overview

A beautiful, lyrical story which explores the problem of plastic in the ocean, and the challenges facing marine life.

Little Turtle loves the ocean with her whole heart. As the years pass, she repeats an incredible journey across the world to the beautiful coral reefs. But one day she finds that plastic has invaded her beloved ocean. Could Turtle's journey be over forever?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781680101997
Publisher:	Tiger Tales.
Publication date:	03/10/2020
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	212,868
Product dimensions:	9.80(w) x 11.20(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD640L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Becky Davies is a children's book editor and author from the South West of England. Her favorite things are animals, books about magic, and anything sparkly. In a parallel universe she lives in Hawaii, where she works in a dog sanctuary and surfs until the sun sets beyond the horizon.

Jennie Poh was born in London and spent her formative years in Malaysia, returning to the UK at the age of nine. She fell in love with the Norfolk countryside, and feels a deep connection with nature and conservation which influences her work. Jennie now lives in Surrey with her two daughters and two marmalade cats.

Editorial Reviews

Rating: 1-5 (5 is an excellent or a Starred review) 5

What did you like about the book: I love this lyrical, beautifully illustrated tale of little turtle and the changing sea.  She starts out at the beach and her love for the ocean grows year after year until one day she notices that something is different.  There is pollution and plastic in places that once were lively and colorful. Turtle gets tangled and thinks her journey is over forever, then divers appear to free her and clean up the ocean.  Her ocean was beautiful once more, and she loved it with her whole heart once again. Lots of facts fill the back pages: notes from the author on the inspiration for the story, glossary of terms, the three R’s, the plastic problem, how garbage gets into the ocean, the great garbage patch, how plastic can hurt marine life, timeline to show how long plastic lasts, and what you can do to help.  In addition, there are other book titles provided and online resources for further exploration.

To whom would you recommend this book?  A great read aloud for earth day and to inspire our young children to care about our planet.

Reviewer’s Name, Library (or school), City and State: Julie Durmis, JC Solmonese Elementary School, Norton, MA

After little Turtle hatches amidst a thunderstorm and flippers her way into the turbulent sea, she finds her wondrous new home full of vibrant life—jellyfish, seals, corals—and falls madly in love. Then, one day, she notices a new inhabitant. “Friend?” she asks the submerged plastic bag but receives no reply. More and more of these objects appear every day, draining color and life from Turtle’s surroundings, and soon she finds herself hopelessly tangled in a nylon net. Human divers appear and kindly attend to the turtle’s predicament, repairing and cleaning her watery abode until it again teems with light and life. This sweet story is ideal for introducing young readers to the topic of ocean pollution, combining splashy, textured illustrations and an adorable protagonist with timely lessons on the importance of reducing plastic waste and caring for our seas. Back matter includes more scientific detail about plastic and ocean pollution and offers some practical ways to help. A colorful cautionary tale that raises important awareness and ends with a heartening hopefulness. —Booklist

From the Publisher

2020-01-21
A sea turtle sees her beloved ocean undergoing worrisome, even dangerous, changes.

Seemingly pitched to incite mild alarm rather than anything stronger in young audiences, this tale follows Little Turtle on an idyllic life course from hatching to maturity. One day, in the course of a pleasant journey back to the beach where she was born, she notices that colors are fading on the reef, and there are more and more “strange new creatures”—plastic bags, in Poh’s bubbly, shimmering undersea scenes—floating everywhere. “The ocean no longer [feels] like a friend,” particularly after she is caught in a drift of netting. In the nick of time, though, two (white) divers “[emerge] from the strangeness” to free her and to restore the sea floor to its former natural beauty. “Thank you,” she says, paddling away with a delighted smile on her delicately featured anthropomorphic face. The more emphatic tones in Michelle Lord’s The Mess That We Made, illustrated by Julia Blattman (2020), or Deborah Diesen’s Pout-Pout Fish Cleans Up the Ocean, illustrated by Dan Hanna (2019), more effectively capture the urgency of the issue. Still, the light touch here offers a less-pressured—and arguably more developmentally appropriate—invitation to absorb the information about the causes and dangers of plastic pollution that Davies places in a closing note.

A call to save our oceans, gentler than most. (print and web resources) (Picture book. 5-7)

Kirkus Reviews