Ducks Overboard!: A True Story of Plastic in Our Oceans
Ducks Overboard!: A True Story of Plastic in Our Oceans
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Perma-Bound from Publisher's Hardcover ©2021--
Publisher's Hardcover ©2021--
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Candlewick Press
Annotation: If a shipping container filled with 28,000 plastic ducks spilled into the Pacific Ocean, where would all those ducks go? Inspired by a real incident, this captivating and innovative look at the pollution crisis in our oceans follows one of the ducks as it is washed away on ocean currents, encountering plastic-endangered whales and sea turtles and passing through the giant floating island of marine debris known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. From the author-illustrator of the acclaimed Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover comes a highly accessible and graphically stylish picture book with an ultimately hopeful message about en
Genre: [Government]
 
Reviews: 2
Catalog Number: #308607
Format: Perma-Bound from Publisher's Hardcover
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Copyright Date: 2021
Edition Date: 2021 Release Date: 09/28/21
Pages: 1 volume (unpaged)
ISBN: Publisher: 1-536-21772-7 Perma-Bound: 0-8000-0910-X
ISBN 13: Publisher: 978-1-536-21772-8 Perma-Bound: 978-0-8000-0910-6
Dewey: 363.72
LCCN: 2021946279
Dimensions: 25 x 28 cm
Language: English
Reviews:
Horn Book (Mon Feb 06 00:00:00 CST 2023)

As in his 2018 title Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover, Motum smartly employs a whimsical character introducing solid scientific concepts, a task this book's child-friendly star (Rubber Duckie, you're the one!) performs swimmingly. Our hero began life almost thirty years ago when it was produced in China, loaded onto a cargo ship, and shipped to the U.S. for distribution. While in transit in the North Pacific, its container was swept overboard and the contents -- including twenty-eight thousand rubber ducks -- dumped in the water. Rubber Duckie is left helplessly floating in the ocean, and readers receive a clear, understandable introduction to oceanography and the environmental threats of plastic in the world's seas. Bright digital illustrations depict the marine life below, including a whale swallowing a plastic bag and a sea turtle caught in an abandoned fishing net. Expository sentences, with their smaller typeface distinguishing them from the main narrative, add context to these sightings. Two uncluttered maps, enhanced with relevant notes (such as the effects of the flotsam on the Great Barrier Reef), show the global paths of many of the real-life twenty-eight thousand. Rubber Duckie, however, flounders in the Pacific Garbage Patch; is again tossed out of the gyre; and is finally discovered on a beach, picked up by one of the many volunteers who attempt to clean up our shores. Back matter provides a diagram, accompanying scientific discussion of ocean currents, information about the 1992 rubber duck toy spill, facts about plastics, and ways readers can help or become citizen scientists. Betty Carter

Kirkus Reviews

A ducky's-eye view of an ocean rapidly becoming more polluted.Speaking for 28,000 bath toys that were washed overboard on the way from Hong Kong to Seattle in 1992, a yellow plastic duck tells its story-from rolling off first a Chinese assembly line and then later a huge cargo ship at sea to, long afterward, floating at last in a child's tub after being plucked from the flotsam on a littered beach. This plot may seem familiar to readers of Eve Bunting's still-in-print Ducky, illustrated by David Wisniewski (1997). What's new is how, while bobbing over busy ocean depths, past colorful fish and undulating jellies, Motum's narrator witnesses a whale swallowing a plastic bag, a struggling sea turtle tangled in a fishing net, and the vast swirl of waste plastic dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The author goes for a broad view in both wide-angled illustrations of litter floating or washed ashore and in adding notes about ocean currents, the value as well as hazards of plastics, and other related topics to his urgent message that our oceans are in trouble. A set of activities and organizations at the end add fresh incentive for young recyclers and eco-activists to get off the stick. Workers in early scenes have Asian features; the child and their dad at the end appear to be White.An awesome odyssey that also makes a telling point, both worthy of repeated iterations. (Informational picture book. 6-8)

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Horn Book (Mon Feb 06 00:00:00 CST 2023)
Kirkus Reviews
Word Count: 1,365
Reading Level: 5.1
Interest Level: 2-5
Accelerated Reader: reading level: 5.1 / points: 0.5 / quiz: 514170 / grade: Lower Grades
Guided Reading Level: P
Fountas & Pinnell: P

Eco facts come to light as a plastic duck narrates this beautifully illustrated true story of thousands of bath toys that were lost at sea and swept to the four corners of the Pacific.

If a shipping container filled with 28,000 plastic ducks spilled into the Pacific Ocean, where would all those ducks go? Inspired by a real incident, this captivating and innovative look at the pollution crisis in our oceans follows one of the ducks as it is washed away on ocean currents, encountering plastic-endangered whales and sea turtles and passing through the giant floating island of marine debris known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. From the author-illustrator of the acclaimed Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover comes a highly accessible and graphically stylish picture book with an ultimately hopeful message about environmental issues and the state of our oceans. An end map documents the widely scattered journey of the real-life plastic ducks, showing where they have been found, as well as facts about the ways plastic is affecting various parts of the world.


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