This book, from author Lauren Davies and illustrator Nico Williams, is an absolute gem of a children's book. It's got every vital ingredient: fun slick non-clichéd rhyming prose and inventive, beautiful pictures, which both work together to tell the story instead of just one following t'other as is so often the case; it squares up to some sea creatures that most kids' books wouldn't touch with a bargepole and succeeds in making them characterful.
And it has a strong, praxis-based, optimistic ecological moral, which engages the reader in the turtle's quest to clean up his corner of the reef without its ever having to preach or infodump - it respectfully assumes some general environmental consciousness on the part of children reading,* and then dives headlong into "well no point moping, let's Do Stuff Together & Try & Make Things Better!" in a fully coherent and exciting way. If part of my inclination toward an activism of pessimism could be laid at the feet of certain children's books in the absence of an activist education, this one no doubt could spur many a child onto hopeful practical paradigm-shifting ladders. Or maybe they'll just like it as a book and that's fine too cos it's a damn good** children's book.
And it has a strong, praxis-based, optimistic ecological moral, which engages the reader in the turtle's quest to clean up his corner of the reef without its ever having to preach or infodump - it respectfully assumes some general environmental consciousness on the part of children reading,* and then dives headlong into "well no point moping, let's Do Stuff Together & Try & Make Things Better!" in a fully coherent and exciting way. If part of my inclination toward an activism of pessimism could be laid at the feet of certain children's books in the absence of an activist education, this one no doubt could spur many a child onto hopeful practical paradigm-shifting ladders. Or maybe they'll just like it as a book and that's fine too cos it's a damn good** children's book.
* Children like nature, don't they? And the ones who don't are little shits who probably don't read anyway. JOKING
** Weird story, I found out about this book by meeting the illustrator in person. She lived downstairs from some friends I was visiting and came back a bit pissed from a night out at the same kind of time that we got back, and we all got chatting (at first about the fact that my friends' toilet had been leaking through her ceiling, y'know, normal London small-talks) and I ended up reading a copy of this book to my friends in their flat, which actually went down surprisingly well considering reading a childrens' book aloud at an aftersesh-type-gathering usually just doesn't happen. I then proceeded to very enthusiastically tell her that I'd been reading lots of kids' books recently*** & could confirm as a connoisseur that this was indeed a really damn good one.
*** That's another story, and is predominantly Big Isaac's fault.
No comments:
Post a Comment