A Miraculous Quest

Any trek can become challenging, even a stroll through your own neighborhood.  (Who knew raccoons and skunks were out and about in daylight?)  When you plan for a longer trip to another part of your state, another state in your country, or a different country, you cannot foresee all possible obstacles.  Your main focus is to get from one point to the other with as little problems as possible and to enjoy as many moments as you can.  

For this reason, animal travels and animal migrations seem like miracles to this human.  Impressive, to say the least, is the chronicle of this animal odyssey by Lindsay Moore titled Yoshi And The Ocean: A Sea Turtle's Incredible Journey Home (Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, May 24, 2022).  Your appreciation and respect for this sea turtle will grow, page turn by page turn.

Before she

had a name,

she was an egg.

Or she was

within an egg,

flippers folded

around a yolk.

After hatching, this being makes her way to the water.  There, as a tiny turtle and injured, she is rescued by fishermen.  They feed her and give her a name,

Yoshitaro.

She is taken to an aquarium in Cape Town.  She is the first turtle there.  As she grows, the people learn.  She lives within this aquarium for others to observe for twenty years!

She knows she needs to leave.  Her caretakers know she needs to leave.  Preparations are made by Yoshi and her humans.  Before being released, a tracking device is glued to her shell.

Now free of the confines of the aquarium and its safety, Yoshi needs to navigate the ocean waters.  Whenever she breaks the surface, a signal is transmitted showing her location.  She swims toward and among a food source, a plankton bloom.  She is recalling how to survive.  For a while, she swims in shallow and deeper waters south of the tip of Africa.  She is eating lots of food.  Where will she go next?  Where is her home?

Surprising those at the aquarium, Yoshi goes south and east around and through the turbulent waters of the famous cape.  Yoshi swims and swims and eats and eats whatever and whenever she can.  Yoshi moves across the ocean, traveling eastward for years!  Yoshi arrives at Australia, home at last.

Readers will not only enjoy reading about the trek this sea turtle takes, but the manner in which author Lindsay Moore presents the information to us.  Her sentences are simple, but descriptive through her word choices.  We are immersed into Yoshi's world at the aquarium and when she is wild within the ocean. 

Throughout the book, Lindsay Moore repeats the words

This is Yoshi.

They are followed by a more detailed account of her current situation and her actions there.  These accounts are fact-filled, but read like poetry.  Once in the wild, whenever Yoshi transmits her location we read the words,

Hello from Yoshi.  I am here.

Here is a passage.

This is Yoshi, homeward-bound turtle.

She is rounding the cape where two oceans meet,

where currents collide.

Where waves are known to rise to like cliffs,

and swallow ships.

She swims east . . . 

and everyone wonders 

where she is going.

Hello from Yoshi. I am here.

Resolute is a word which comes to mind when you look at big, bold Yoshi on the right side of the matching and open dust jacket and book case.  Nothing is going to stop this turtle from finding her way home.  The blue of the ocean water extends over the spine to the left side of the back.  There it provides a background for three photographs.  Two are of Yoshi in her aquarium home.  The third in the lower, right-hand corner is of the crew placing Yoshi back into the ocean.  Between the two sets of pictures, artist Lindsay Moore has placed three fish swimming behind Yoshi.

On the opening endpapers is a vast seascape with a large sandy area as a new day dawns.  There, tracks extend in several directions.  One set of tracks has a tiny sea turtle making their way toward the water.  The same area is visited decades later on the closing endpapers.  It is night with a starry sky and a full moon.  Waves lap the shore.  An adult sea turtle makes their way through those waves to the wind-swept beach.

Prior to the title page, on a double-page picture, we are taken close to a cluster of sea turtle eggs laying in a sandy nest.  We are shown a cross-section of one.  There is Yoshi.  This is followed by another double-page picture of sea turtles leaving the sand and entering the water.  The verso and title page text is carefully placed here on the left and right, respectively.

The full-color art was rendered in graphite, watercolor, drawing inks, Conte crayon, and color pencils.

Using a blend of single-page images in various perspectives with glorious double-page visuals in shifting points of view, readers are transported to a fascinating time and place.  We are at the aquarium standing in front of a vast glass display of sea life swimming in front of us.  In another scene, Yoshi is right in front of us, her face next to the glass, filling our view.

When Yoshi is placed back into the wild, we view her from underneath as the sun creates a glow around her, or at night when she is a small creature in an enormous body of water beneath an equally enormous sky.  We are supplied with extraordinary visions of other sea life.  In fact, once Yoshi is at sea, all the illustrations are two-page pictures.

One of my many favorite illustrations is the picture for the above-quoted passage. A dull gray sky with only two seabirds stretches from one side to the other at the top of the image.  Beneath this, towering white-capped waves in angry hues of deep blue and turquoise roll across the pages.  Amid this, small but strong, is Yoshi swimming in white foam.  Her tiny tracking tag is on her back.  

With every reading of Yoshi And The Ocean: A Sea Turtle's Incredible Journey Home written and illustrated by Lindsay Moore, you are moved by the accomplishments of this animal.  At the close of the book is extensive back matter.  There are two pages with a large map of Yoshi's trip.  There are numbered points with corresponding explanations along all four sides.  There are two pages with detailed descriptions of the characteristics of Loggerhead Sea Turtles.  These carefully explain their exterior and interior qualities with text and illustrations.  Still two more pages supply readers with facts about finding food in the ocean.  There is a page of references for more information followed by a page explaining how the tracking device on Yoshi worked. 

Yoshi sent 23,167 satellite messages during her incredible journey.

I highly recommend this title for your personal and professional collections.

To learn more about Lindsay Moore and her other work, please follow the link attached to her name to access her website.  Lindsay Moore has accounts on Instagram and Pinterest.  This book is featured by Julie Danielson on her site, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.  Lindsay Moore is interviewed at The Mitten, The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Michigan Chapter Blog about this title.  At the publisher's website is a teaching guide.

A Garden on the Move

Twenty-four titles are stacked next to me, all by the same author.  Prior to 1981 when the first book, Fritz and the Beautiful Horses, was both written and illustrated by her, the only other work to be found were her pictures in the title, St. Patrick's Day in the Morning published a year earlier.  With a few more titles to her credit, a characteristic style of borders, reflecting additional details of setting, flora and fauna, or foreshadowing, had become a part of her books that readers relished, looked forward to with anticipation.

Nearly forty volumes later, Jan Brett, has an artistic technique that is hers and hers alone.  Immersing readers in a title's setting with her exquisite paintings done in watercolor and gouache, she takes us to places we might never go.  Her newest title, Mossy (G. P. Putnam's Sons, September 18, 2012) is the result of observations made when she and her husband were enjoying a summer morning on their dock at Goose Lake.  Lucky for we readers, Jan Brett is able to see stories wherever she may be.


On a misty, moisty morning, a young turtle stood at the edge of Lilypad Pond.  Her name was Mossy.

This turtle, an eastern box turtle, is rather fond of her home.  So fond, in fact, that moss, ferns and eventually wild flowers begin to grow and bloom upon her shell.  Little does she know, when she looks at her image in the pond, her appearance is being noticed by others.

As she peers into the water one day, a face other than her own is looking back.  It's Scoot, another eastern box turtle.  Although he thinks her garden is lovely, it's Mossy that's captured his heart.  It's turtle love!

As the two, eyes locked, make their way toward one another, Mossy is lifted up, up and away.  Oh, no...Dr. Carolina, curator of a local natural history museum, believes Mossy will be her star exhibit.  Nothing could top the appeal of a colorful garden growing on a turtle's back.

She and her niece, Tory, design what they believe is the perfect home for Mossy.  But how can not being at Lilypad Pond be called home?  Mossy misses Scoot.  And Scoot waits for Mossy.  Summer moves into fall and fall into winter.  Mossy's popularity grows.

A visit by Tory's class, a question and spring's arrival cause the museum to be closed.  What's going on?  What's happened to Mossy?  The labor of two strangers answers all questions bringing this story to an unexpected but wonderfully natural conclusion.  Jan Brett wouldn't have it any other way.


When reading the narrative scripted by Jan Brett, it's not hard to imagine walking in the woods, coming upon a pond with an eastern box turtle sunning herself upon a rock.  Jan Brett would point to her, drawing attention to the beauty growing on her carapace.  Then she would begin a story stepping back to the Victorian times about this turtle and her mate, a naturalist and her niece blending the two tales into one of respect, admiration and faithfulness fulfilled.


If you open the jacket (cover) Scoot, on the back, is moving right along toward Mossy on the front as she glances back at him.  The opening and closing endpapers, identical, are an intricate montage of a myriad of mosses.  A small oval portrait of Mossy is centered on the title page surrounded by a collection of feathers.

Like a naturalist's sketchbook each two page spread features a collection; moths, mosses, fungi, wildflowers, rocks and minerals, sea shells, butterflies beetles, fossils, seeds, orchids, feathers, and butterflies.  Framing the illustrations these collections are themselves each framed with delicate lines  depicting new and numerous types of borders.  A realistic array of colors are captured in each picture making the reader feel as though they might step right into this spectacular world.

Having been a fan of Jan Brett's illustrations and stories for years, it would be hard for me to not like one of her books.  Without a doubt I am placing Mossy in my top ten.  I have already read this title again and again.  The one thing I have not been able to find yet is Hedgie, usually hidden in all her titles, but what I did find (oh, Jan Brett, most clever) is something  sure to please a very special person.

Not only will this book be enjoyed again and again by readers but the possibilities for extending the text are huge given all the natural collections displayed on every turn of page.  The link for Jan Brett's home page is embedded in her name above.

Mossy bookmarks can be found at this link.  A 2013 calendar using Mossy as a theme is here.  To make postcards with the Mossy illustrations click this link.  For news about this title, Jan Brett's ideas and extras about Mossy click here.

To see how Jan Brett draws Mossy watch this video.