Ocean Ecology Message From the Ocean Itself in Creative Picture Book

Ecology has increasingly become a topic of interest with a lot of the focus being placed on cleaning up our oceans. The amount of trash and plastics that have found a way into our oceans has become a worldwide problem. There are countless news stories about the appalling amount of trash and plastics in oceans around the planet. There are now many companies and individuals who have organized the cleanup of our precious oceans.

Katie Cottle's creative picture book The Blue Giant is a great tool to introduce the subject of cleaning our oceans to young readers. Meera and her mom take a vacation day to the beach. They get a huge surprise when the ocean becomes active and actually speaks to them. The ocean has an important message for them. Our ocean needs help! Meera and her mom go out onto the sea in a boat and dive into the ocean. The ocean giant shows them the problem of all the garbage that is in our ocean. They discover that the amount of trash and plastics in the ocean is a HUGE PROBLEM for the creatures that call the ocean home. Meera and her mom get busy cleaning up. The next day, Meera and her mom return to the beach and engage others in the clean-up. It takes more than one person to clean up the mess.

The Blue Giant is illustrated in beautiful ocean colors of turquoise and shades of blue. Each page is filled with a large illustration of the ocean and Meera's clean-up activities. Katie Cottle also includes a helpful list of single-use plastics that we can use to reduce our use of plastic material that ends up in our oceans.

The Blue Giant is a simple and beautifully written picture book with a message to everyone. It is recommended for ages 4-8 . Cottle's book was published by Pavilion Children's Books and has an ISBN of 978-1-84365-445-2.

Teachers who include lessons about our oceans in their curriculum will want to include Katie Cottle's The Blue Giant in their classroom library. This creative picture book is a great tool to introduce the topic of ocean ecology to young readers. Young readers will be interested in helping to clean up our oceans after reading about Meera's cleanup project to help our oceans and the sea life that call the ocean their home.

*Read The Blue Giant in your story time session. Call attention to the creative way that the ocean speaks to Meera and her mom about the problem of trash that finds its way into our oceans.

*Engage the children in a discussion of what the ocean might say to them about the amount of garbage and plastics that are now in our oceans.

*Bring in a collection of plastic items that we use daily in our lives. The children might be encouraged to bring in these types of objects that they have at their home. Engage the children in a recycling project for these items.

*Read the included list of plastic items that Cottle suggests that we use as single-use plastic items. Have the students collect some of these items to bring in for a display in the classroom.

*Have a globe available to show students how much of our planet is covered by our oceans. Have other books about our oceans available for students to explore.

*Engage students in a creative writing projecf with other ideas about saving our oceans and the creatures that call the ocean their home. Students who do not yet write may draw their ideas.

*Engage the students in exploring their favorite sea creatures.