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.