Alba and the Ocean Cleanup

by Lara Hawthorne

Overview

Alba the fish has spent her entire life collecting precious objects that drift down to the ocean floor. From delicate shells to brightly colored coral, each year on her birthday she gathers one more precious item. But over the years, Alba notices her collection is losing its sparkle and that the world is changing. There is trash everywhere! When, on her birthday hunt, something unthinkable happens, it seems like the plastic may have changed her ocean home forever. Is it too late?

Alba and the Ocean Cleanup is a beautifully illustrated picture book about what we can do to save this important ecosystem.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536210446
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	03/17/2020
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	838,383
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Fresh new talent Lara Hawthorne graduated from Falmouth University in 2013. She is the author-illustrator of The Night Flower: The Blooming of the Saguaro Cactus and the illustrator of Carol Ann Duffy's The King of Christmas. Inspired by nature, myths, and legends, she creates wonderful small worlds with her distinct watercolor style. She lives in Bristol, in the U.K.

Editorial Reviews

03/09/2020

Appealing hopefulness infuses the implausible tale of Alba, an orange fish who lives in a reef where “shimmering fish darted and dived, and strange creatures scuttled into hidden places.” She loves to collect things, but over time, “Alba found fewer beautiful objects... and slowly, more trash started to appear.” Hawthorne’s clean-edged watercolor and gouache illustrations conjure the dismal fate of the dazzling reef—a four-panel spread shows the trash piling up and the color leaching away. When Alba spots a pearl in a plastic bottle, she is trapped trying to retrieve it. After rescuing Alba, a girl named Kaia tells everyone in her community “how dangerous their plastic and trash were making the oceans.” The town cleans up the mess over the course of a single page turn, even installing wind turbines, and Kaia returns home to a recovering reef. Closing spreads identify animals in the reef and ways to take care of the ocean, but the book’s simplistic, speedy approach to cleanup may not impress upon readers the scale of the actions needed. Ages 3–7. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

When a reef fish becomes stuck in a plastic bottle, a caring human child not only rescues her, but also organizes an ocean cleanup...the simple story and bright pictures underscore the importance of taking care of our ocean.
—Kirkus Reviews

Appealing hopefulness infuses the implausible tale of Alba, an orange fish who lives in a reef where “shimmering fish darted and dived, and strange creatures scuttled into hidden places.”...Closing spreads identify animals in the reef and ways to take care of the ocean.
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2019-11-24
When a reef fish becomes stuck in a plastic bottle, a caring human child not only rescues her, but also organizes an ocean cleanup.

Like many humans, Alba, an orange fish with white spots, loves to collect interesting and beautiful objects. As she grows bigger and older, she finds more trash and fewer treasures in her neighborhood—and her reef-dwelling friends disappear. Still searching for treasures, she swims into a bottle to retrieve a pearl inside and becomes trapped. The bottle washes up on shore, where Kaia, also a collector of treasures and shown with long black hair and dark skin, comes to the rescue. Placing the fish temporarily in a bucket, she convinces her whole town to help clean "the mess that they had made." Hawthorne's stylized, posterlike illustrations initially show a bright, lively reef full of identifiable fish, coral, and other sea creatures. (A spread at the end introduces some of the other inhabitants, an opportunity for seek-and-find activities.) As the trash increases, the fish vanish. Near the end, a spread shows the windmill-powered town, cleaners on the beach, and even divers removing trash, making possible the busy reef scene that greets Alba's safe return. First published in England as Alba, the Hundred Year Old Fish, this hopeful fable may help very young readers think about the problem of plastic waste.

Unlikely—but the simple story and bright pictures underscore the importance of taking care of our ocean. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews

Read More