What to Read to Your Kids

How do we celebrate our individualism without turning our backs on our community? How do we lift up those around us without sacrificing our sense of self? Teaching our children to walk this fine line as they grow into adults may be one of the most important things we as parents do.

Bonus if it involves a little sugar along the way.

Andrea Tsurumi strikes just the right chord between individualism and community in her new picture book, Crab Cake: Turning the Tide Together (Ages 4-8)—claw’s down our favorite picture book of the year. (So far.) You may remember Tsurumi from her debut picture book, which I gushed about here last year. She also did the illustrations for another about-to-be-released gem, which I’ll give you a peek at on my Instagram later this weekend. But today’s post is all about Crab Cake, where Tsurumi once again sits in the seat of author-illustrator-cartoonist and delivers her signature whimsy and visual storytelling alongside the valuable message that each of us offers something unique AND we are stronger together.

When we are first introduced to Crab Cake’s coral reef—“under the sea, where sunlight touches sand”—we see an active, brightly-colored community, where creatures of all shapes and sizes exist harmoniously alongside one another, each one doing his own thing. These sea-faring critters may have adorable cartoon eyes (and will soon prove themselves capable of human speech), but their behaviors are largely rooted in science. Tsurumi’s own fascination in researching her oceanic subject matter shines through in these spreads. Scallop does “loop de loops”; Sea Turtle holds her breath; Dolphin “blows bubble rings”; Parrotfish “crunches coral and poops sand”; and so forth.

Crab is also doing his own thing, although his behavior is rooted less in science and more in Tsurumi’s inventive imagination. “Crab bakes cakes.” We’re not talking about the cuisine you dine on at seafood shacks; we’re talking about confectionary pleasures—as in, colorful, delectable, frosted cakes, dotted with treasures from the sea.

As many good bakers can testify, a passion for baking often extends to a passion for feeding others. Crab is no exception. He silently proffers the fruits of his labors on all his neighbors, both below and above the sea. He even presents one fish with a cake just as the latter is about to succumb to the food chain.

Crab asks for nothing from those he feeds. He only returns to his mixing bowl. He is busy and focused—although there’s an aura of loneliness around him. In fact, very few of the sea creatures interact with one another.

“Until one night, there’s a BIG SPLASH!” A massive pile of garbage is tossed off a ship and into the sea, settling over the coral reef and enshrouding everything in a putrid green-tinged blackness.

There’s nothing like a disaster to test the waters of a community. Immediately following the garbage dump, every living thing under the sea is paralyzed, “frozen” with disbelief and fear. Everyone except Crab. Crab keeps on keeping on. When his community desperately needs a leader, Crab does what he does best. He bakes. He fills the dark, dank, hopeless void around him with color and sweetness in the form of a giant cake. And, like moths to the light, the others approach Crab and ask for a bite.

Quietly, peacefully, but with his own individual flair, Crab mobilizes his community. Because as soon as the sea creatures gather to break bread, they can’t shut up. The color returns to their scales as they vent, commiserate, and ponder. As they give their regards to the chef. As they start to make a plan.

Here’s where Crab allows others to shine. A shrimp asks, “All right—anyone have any ideas?” A tentacle goes up from an octopus, who leads everyone to the garbage heap, where each creature assumes a job. “Lobster lifts. Snapper shoves. Clownfish rolls. Turtles tow. Dolphins drag. Clam encourages. Manta Rays move. Octopus inks.”

The result? Well, I’m normally not a fan of spoilers, but the spread which reveals the outcome is too perfect not to share. My kids’ faces absolutely lit up when we opened to this page.

Three cheers for the important ecological message whimsically rendered in these pages. (The excellent back matter notes online resources for ocean cleanup.) But I’d like to think this story also lays the groundwork for a broader conversation about our place in the world. Like Crab, we have a responsibility to ourselves—to find and embrace our passion, to unabashedly do our thing. And, like Crab, we also have a responsibility to see beyond ourselves—to use our gifts to connect to and inspire the communities around us.

If we’re ready and willing to do both, we can weather the stinkiest of storms.

—

Did you enjoy this post? Make sure you don’t miss any others! Enter your email on the right hand side of my homepage, and you’ll be guaranteed to receive a new post in your inbox 3-4 times a month. Plus, follow me on Facebook (What To Read To Your Kids), Twitter (@thebookmommy), and now Instagram (@thebookmommy), where I regularly post articles and updates on what my kids are reading to themselves.

Review copy from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All opinions are my own. Amazon.com affiliate links are above, although I prefer that we all shop local when we can!

Tagged: Andrea Tsurumi, comic strips, community, cooking as theme in children's stories, crabs in children's stories, ecology, environmentalism in children's books, fish, ocean, octopus, picture book, resiliency in children's stories, speech bubbles

Comments are closed.