Ocean Soup: A Recipe for You, Me, and a Cleaner Sea

by Meeg Pincus, Lucy Semple (Illustrator)

Overview

From the shore, the ocean looks like clear, sparkling blue but look closely at a small scoop and you'll find the ocean looks more like soup!

Our oceans are filled with plastics, from water bottles and take-out containers to the teeny tiny plastic particles you need a microscope to see. But who exactly cooked up this stinky soup? And, more importantly, what is the recipe for getting (and keeping) our oceans clean? This bouncing, rhyming story pulls no punches about how we ended up in this sticky mess but also offers hope and help for cleaning up this ocean soup.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534111189
Publisher:	Sleeping Bear Press
Publication date:	03/15/2021
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 11.10(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	840L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 8 Years

About the Author

Meeg Pincus is a children’s author, humane educator, and speaker who loves celebrating and telling stories about real "solutionaries" who help people, animals, and the planet. She is a lifelong writer and has been a newspaper reporter, book editor, and essayist—but writing children's books is her favorite. It was as a newspaper reporter over 20 years ago that Meeg had the honor of meeting Miep Gies in person. She lives in San Diego, California.

Lucy Semple is an illustrator based in Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom. She works from her home studio, drinking as much tea as she can between projects.

Table of Contents

Beginning of Text What is Ocean Soup? A Recipe for Cleaner Oceans Author's Note

Editorial Reviews

2021-01-27
Ubiquitous use of plastics has produced oceans of plastic soup left for a new generation to clean up.

Rhyming couplets use an extended cooking metaphor to introduce the problem of plastic pollution before calling on “new chefs” to follow the recipe for solving it. The playful tone of the text and illustrations belie the sad facts they convey. Pincus points out that close examination of ocean water reveals “a confetti-like brew” of tiny plastic specks. Plastic trash ends up in the ocean and is “puréed” by ocean currents, ending up concentrated in gyres. Her soup metaphor works well. This unhealthy brew is then eaten by sea creatures, large and small. Humans who eat fish are also eating plastic bits. She suggests readers call on plastics producers to stop and that they change their personal habits, as well. Semple’s animation-style illustrations feature a diverse group of children throughout. Cartoon seascapes show plastic at every depth as well as creatures who eat it. A world map with continents and oceans shows the locations of major gyres. A final spread of backmatter offers more detailed information at a higher reading level than the primary text. Altogether, this is an engaging, informative package aimed at an audience who will, alas, probably be familiar with the problem of ocean degradation but not powerful enough to do much about it. Fortunately, the writer’s suggestions are doable.

A lighthearted approach to a sobering truth. (author's note) (Informational picture book. 6-9)

Kirkus Reviews