Storywraps rated it
This book bears a very timely message about taking care of our precious oceans and the creatures that call them their home. It points out many dangers that its inhabitants face caused by the litter and garbage that is thrown into their underwater environment.
Yapper the Snapper wants to play with his friends but he soon discovers they are sick from the trash and pollution that has been dumped into the water.
“Some coughed and sneezed,
gasped and wheezed,
they couldn’t breathe in the polluted sea.”
“There were bottles and tins, crates and bins,
floating and choking the sea within.”
He dons a superhero persona and swims about saving them from harm. After he heroically rescues: krill covered in swill, a spinner dolphin with her fin caught in a rusty tin, a green turtle caught in a girdle, and a huge humpback with a plastic bottle stuck in her low hole… just to name a few, happily they swim along with him as he frees even more endangered critters.
Yapper gathers and tethers up all the loose garbage which allows he and his friends to have some well-deserved playtime finally.
Now free in the sea they gathered to say,
“Thank you, Yapper, you saved the day.”
The illustrations are wonderful and the message is timely and necessary if we are to clean up and restore the ocean to its natural beauty and cleanliness. I found the rhyming a bit awkward at times and the repetitiveness a bit too long and tedious. I wish Yapper’s friends had pitched in and helped with the cleanup too making it a successful team effort. Overall, the author gets her point across and the book, when shared, will be a meaningful catalyst for a much-needed conversation about being good stewards to our oceans. It would be a meaningful book to have in a classroom or an elementary school library also.
