One Turtle's Last Straw by Eliza Boxer

This nonfiction picture book is about a real event that occurred while a group of scientists were working on the ocean. In 2015, Christine Figgener was gathering data for her Ph.D. research off the coast of Costa Rica. They had captured a sea turtle and it appeared to have a barnacle in one of its nostrils so they decided to remove it. Instead, it was found to be a 10cm length of a plastic straw. While struggling to remove the straw, Christine filmed the successful process and then uploaded the video to YouTube. The video went viral and the movement to eliminate plastic straws was born. One Turtle's Last Straw is about that incident and plastics in our oceans.

In One Turtle's Last Straw, the story begins with the straw. A young boy sucks up the last drops of his drink and discards the cup and straw into the trash container. However, the wind lifts the cup out of the trash and sends it swirling down the street where the straw falls through the grate in the street and into the storm sewer. There is finds its way into the ocean. 

 In the ocean a young sea turtle swims through the water but soon becomes caught up in a fishing net. Struggling to free himself, he begins to run out of air but manages to twist free in time. Now hungry he spies a crab on the sea floor and catches it. But in swallowing the delicious crab, he also swallows the plastic straw. When he goes to pass seawater out of his nose, something hard gets stuck. The object is partly wedged in his nose and in his throat making it difficult to swallow. As the weeks pass by, the turtle struggles to survive, unable to smell his food and eat properly.

Then one day he finds himself pulled out of the water off the coast of Costa Rica by some marine biologists who are studying the olive ridley sea turtle. At first they think the object in his nose might be a barnacle but when Dr. Nathan Robinson attempts to remove it, he manages to remove a small piece. Dr. Christine Figgener another marine biologist identifies it as a piece of a plastic straw. She continues filming their efforts to help the turtle, who is hissing and squirming. Eventually they manage to pull out four inches of plastic straw and the turtle stops struggling and is able to breathe now. The turtle is cleaned up and set free, back into the waters around Costa Rica. 

Meanwhile, months later, a young girl dining in a restaurant decides to forgo having a plastic straw in her drink.

Discussion

One Turtle's Last Straw offers young readers the opportunity to learn about the problem of plastics in the world's oceans by portraying a real life event a group of marine biologists experienced during their research. While out on the ocean, off the coast of Costa Rica, they came face to face with the negative impact plastics can have on marine life. 

 

Boxer opens her picture book by providing her readers with a possible scenario describing how a plastic straw might end up in the ocean and how these single-use plastics can have unexpected consequences on the marine environment. The little boy using the straw in the opening panel, had no idea that his straw would end up, not in a landfill, but in the ocean. Once in the ocean, plastics do not readily breakdown and sometimes stay in their original shape for years. It is shown lying on the sea floor, mostly intact.  These plastics are often mistakenly ingested as foods, for example, whales have been found with their stomachs filled with plastic bags. They can also be ingested along with the regular food marine life might eat, such as the turtle in the story inadvertently ingesting the straw along with the crab.

Once ingested, plastics can cause huge problems for marine life who cannot digest them. In One Turtle's Last Straw, this particular sea turtle has two harrowing experiences with plastics in the ocean environment: first becoming trapped in a fishing net, then ingesting the straw. It's interesting that Boxer decided to portray the turtle trapped in the fishing net. We now know that much of the garbage in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is discarded fishing and trawling equipment from China and Japan. A whopping eighty percent of plastics in the ocean originate in Asia. 

Boxer not only portrays the turtle having the plastic straw removed but also shows the effect the video has on people around the world. A young child, presumably having seen the video of the suffering sea turtle, decides to forgo a plastic straw in her drink. Although the effect of banning plastic straws is probably minimal considering the huge amount of plastics entering the ocean, the goal is awareness and thoughtful action regarding the use of single-use plastics. The story told in One Turtle's Last Straw can motivate younger readers to consider how we can live more sustainably and as good stewards of the Earth. Can we change the way we package the many items that use plastic packaging?

Helping tell the story are the digital illustrations done by Marta Alvarez Miguens using Artstudio and Photoshop. Boxer includes an Author's Note at the back which describes the observations of the scientists who were part of the rescue of the sea turtle, how young people are working to solve pollution issues in Kids Taking Action to Tackle Ocean Pollution, a Bibliography and sources for doing further topic research in Explore Further.

Book Details:

One Turtle's Last Straw by Eliza Boxer
New York: Crown Books for Young Readers    2022