One Tiny Turtle

How do you best convince young children, up to about age seven years, that sea turtles need our care and concern if they are to survive? Davies helps them empathise by telling the life story of one little Loggerhead turtle. The story begins when the baby Turtle is 'not much bigger than a bottletop' and lives in the sea turtle nursery in a tangle of seaweed and driftwood just below the surface of the ocean. Then, at the age of a few years, Turtle leaves the nursery and, now 'bigger than a dinner plate', swims into the open sea. The food she eats - small sea creatures like crabs and shrimps - and the environments she moves through from 'cool seaweed jungles' to 'turquoise lagoons' are powerfully described in words and pictures. By the end of the story Turtle has become 'big as a barrow' and has to struggle onto the land. She lays her eggs which are 'like a hundred squidgy ping-pong balls' in a sandy hole and the cycle begins again. For me, one great strength of this book is that while quality information is given, the limitations of our knowledge are often hinted at. No-one sees Turtle leave the nursery and she disappears for years - 'only good luck will catch you a glimpse of her' - to return instinctively to the beach where she was born to lay her eggs.