THE BIG BEACH CLEANUP

Disappointed when the end-of-summer sand-castle competition is postponed due to beach conditions, Cora starts campaigns to clean the beach and to avoid creating more plastic trash.

The storyline of this thinly disguised lesson is straightforward. The aspiring castle-contest–contestant tries to clean up the beach, finds the task overwhelming, discovers that people are often too busy to pick up the accumulated trash but can help in other ways, learns about animals thinking trash is food, enlists some friends, and, with other contestants on the trash-free beach, gets to build her castle after all. What distinguishes the presentation are Rewse’s colorful illustrations. They suggest a seaside community with a diverse population, palm trees, plenty of sun and sand, and, unfortunately (and all too realistically), a beach strewn with familiar plastic trash. Cora and her mother have brown skin and long textured hair, and there’s a pleasing variety of skin tones, hair colors and styles, and generations among the simply depicted characters. The beach-cleaners all wear gloves or use trash-picking poles. The final spread shows the sand-castle competition, and though Cora’s construction looks like a grand place to live, readers can see that others are even more complex or imaginative. But that’s not the end. Cora’s new project is a trash-reducing campaign. An author’s note provides more information about plastic trash and ways to avoid creating it.

Simple enough for preschool and kindergarten listeners but an effective introduction to a worldwide problem.