Jelly-Boy

Nicole Godwin

Christopher Nielsen

Walker, 2020

32pp., hbk., RRP $A24.99

9781760651237

The little jellyfish has fallen in love with a big and strong jellyfish, and even though her family didn’t like him because they had seen his type before and declared them dangerous, the little jellyfish is besotted and can’t let go.  But Jelly-Boy is not what she thinks.  Her family is right and while trouble continues to find him, she follows.  Will she escape his clutches before it is too late?

Nicole Godwin, author of both Ella and Billie, has made it her mission to be the voice for those creatures who don’t have their own, and in this new release she has taken on the cause of our ocean creatures and the pollution of their habitat, particularly by plastic bags. Even being caught in the propeller of a boat’s motor does not destroy Jelly-Boy as he floats on carried by the currents and in one dramatic double-page spread the reader is shown just how lethal these items can be.  In a fact page we learn that each year over 1 000 000 seabirds and 100 000 sea creatures die from eating them or becoming entangled in them.

The message in this story is very clear – by reviewing, reducing, reusing and recycling our use of plastics, each one of us, including the young readers that this is intended to teach, can make a difference to help prevent great islands of plastic waste that can be seen from space from forming in our oceans. By writing the story from the perspective of a love-struck jellyfish so it entertains as well as educates,  Godwin raises awareness without being didactic and Nielsen’s illustrations are perfect because the reader seems to be in on Jelly-Boy’s ‘secret” identity before the main character! You can hear them willing her to know and understand the danger before she is entangled in it herself.

A must-have   addition to any unit focusing on the environment, its threats and sustainability – such a hot topic that even our little ones understand it from a young age.