Stealing Little Moon: The Legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools by Dan Sasuweh Jones

In Stealing Little Moon, author Dan Sasuweh Jones explores the legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools within .

Chapter One Kill the Indian In Him explores how the Indian residential boarding school school system came about. Jones traces the origin of the boarding schools to the early mission schools set up by the Spanish in the 1600's. This was followed by the establishment of Harvard University by the British and then the addition of the Indian College to bring Christianity to the surrounding Native people." The idea was to expose Indian students to English ways and have them bring this knowledge back to their tribes.

The end of the Civil War and the migration west of "settlers", led to war between the U.S. government and the Indians living on the land. The U.S. government took away the ancestral lands of the Indians and forcibly removed them. But the idea to educate Indian children to white ways, making it easier to assimilate the next generation, came from the work of U.S. Army Captain, Richard Henry Pratt. His successful forced assimilation program on captured Indian warriors, led him to design one for Indian children.

Pratt's first off-registration school was Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which took in only young children and opened in 1879. It was located on an old military base near Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Pratt's motto came to be "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." The goal was to mold Indian children so that they "could become part of white society", leaving behind their own cultural traditions, thus solving what the U.S. government had termed "the Indian problem." 

The first group of children were taken from the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations in South Dakota, travelling fifteen hundred miles to Carlisle, arriving on October 6, 1879. The children were "ripped from their families" and entered a strange world that was run like a military institution. "Carlisle required the Indian students to cut their long braids, to take 'American' names, to dress in drab U.S. military uniforms to speak only English, and to march wherever they went around campus...."

Before and after photographs show the changes in the young Indians' appearances. These pictures along with those of "classroom experiences, concerts, sports, and happy interactions with the staff." were used to promote Pratt's project. Chemawa Indian School opened in 1880, taking in children from the Puyallup Indians from Puget Sound in Washington. The number of schools soon mushroomed, with boarding schools in New Mexico, Nebraska, Arizona, California and Kansas. The children were forcibly taken and if families refused, the government withheld rations, clothing and even jailed fathers. Some tried to hide their children but few escaped.

In Chapter Two Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight, the author tells the story of his grandmother, Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight and how she came to the Indian boarding school, Chilocco, which played a large part in his own family history. The school that educated the author's family members was built on the banks of the Chilocco Creek, "in the middle of empty, tall grass prairie." One hundred children from the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kowa tribes arrived in 1884. Author Dan Sasuweh Jones' grandmother's family, the Little Cooks, were members of the Ponca tribe. His grandmother's name in Ponca was Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight but she came to be known as Elizabeth Little Cook. Little Moon's father (the author's great-grandfather) was Sam Little Cook. He was Head Chief of their clan, called the Rain Clan. Her mother was Esther Broken Jaw Little Cook. There were six children in the family ranging in age from four to eighteen. They included daughters Creth, Annie, Fannie, and Elizabeth (Little Moon), and sons David and Henry.

Life before the boarding school for Little Moon was simple and slow. Her family had built a farm and they lived by "...eating foods that were either home grown or harvested."  They had cattle, chickens and pigs. There was no electricity or plumbing. The family was close-knit, practicing their Ponca customs and values. This all changed in 1885, when Little Moon was forcibly taken from her Ponca family by the Indian agent. She was four years old. Sam Little Cook, noticing that there were intruders near his home, ordered his wife Esther to hide their children. However, the Indian Agent was determined that four-year-old Elizabeth was to attend the boarding school. The women accompanying the Indian Agent saw where little Elizabeth had been hidden, took her, and forcibly placed the screaming little girl into the wagon. 

For Elizabeth the trauma was just beginning. She along with the other children in the wagon were taken to the community of White Eagle. White Eagle was set up like a Ponca summer/winter encampment but instead of a semicircle of buffalo-hide teepees, there were wooden homes. The community also had a sawmill, a trading post, and in the middle a three-storey school. Initially this school had been for Ponca orphans, but now children like Elizabeth, who had families, were forced to attend.

Once in the school, Elizabeth underwent a physical transformation to start the process of losing her Ponca identity: her braids were cut, her clothes changed and she was stripped of any personal possession like a small medicine bag. At White Eagle, at least her family could still visit her. But then one day, Elizabeth, along with all the other students were packed off far way to Chilocco. It was 1886, and the school had already been open for two years. Elizabeth Little Cook, formerly Little Moon was the first of four generations of her family to be connected intimately to the Quaker boarding school, either as a student or an employee. Chilocco would forever change Little Moon and her family in ways they did not anticipate and which were to affect the generations to come.

Discussion

Stealing Little Moon is a long overdue book, written for younger readers, about the Indian boarding school era in the United States.  Stealing Little Moon covers four generations of author Dan Sasuweh Jones' American Indian family during what is now referred to as the boarding school era, from 1884 to 1980. During the boarding school era, U.S. government agents forcibly seized young Indian children and transported them, far from their families, to boarding schools. The purpose of his book is to "...tell their stories and those of my own family members." It also "...explores what it was like to be an American Indian child during the boarding school years...as well as the depth and richness of our heritage." 

As he traces his family history through the boarding school era, Jones also provides many details about the schools themselves, the relationship between the American Indians and the U.S. Government, the significant contributions of American Indians to American culture and society, and the struggle for equality, justice, reparation and healing.

He begins by offering readers with background information on the boarding schools. "The network of government schools was designed to wipe out American Indian culture and replace it with white ways...Forced to leave their families to attend the schools, children had to disown their language and rituals and they were brainwashed into adopting white ways. Whether or not they obeyed the rules, the children were abused emotionally and physically by the administrators and teachers. After they returned home and married, many passed on this abuse to the next generation." In effect, the function of these schools was "cultural genocide": stripping "Indian children of their heritage and cultural practices."

Jones outlines the origin of the Indian boarding schools from the Spanish mission schools in the early 1600's to the establishment of the Indian College at Harvard, to bring Christianity to the native peoples of the Americas. In the post-Civil War era, Indians were stripped of their ancestral lands and forcibly removed for European "settlers". The idea to educate Indian children to white ways, making it easier to assimilate the next generation, came from the work of U.S. Army Captain, Richard Henry Pratt. His successful forced assimilation program on captured Indian warriors, led him to design one for Indian children. Pratt's first off-reservation school was Carlisle Indian Industrial School which took in only young children and opened in 1879. His motto was "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." 

Dan Sasuweh Jones' family story is intimately connected to that of the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, built in Indian Territory which eventually became north-central Oklahoma. The purpose of this school and other boarding schools was that of forcing "young Indian children to abandon their heritage." His grandmother Elizabeth (Little Moon), his mother Velma Pensoneau (Full Moon)  and her siblings, Edward, Otilia, Francis and Daniel all attended. Jones' sisters Donna and Esther,  his brother Mike  and his first cousin Charmain as well as many other relatives experienced Chilocco. Although the author did not attend Chilocco, he worked there for many years. Jones shows how with each generation, the boarding schools improved and the experience was less traumatic, but the goal of achieving cultural assimilation was still successful despite many reforms. 

Many parts of Stealing Little Moon are difficult to read. The passage in Chapter Two Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight describing the forced abduction of four-year-old Little Moon is truly heartbreaking. Jones highlights just how powerless American Indian parents were to protect their children from the Indian agents and how determined the government was to take them, even to the point of starving families and jailing fathers. In Chapter 6 Hateful Things, the acts of unkindness, the punishment and abuse of Indian children for cultural slips, bad manners, disobedience, imprudence and bed wetting are shocking. Jones describes the use of handcuffs, lockup rooms, whips, straps, and even the threat of being sent to the Hiawatha Insane Asylum for Indians. Many survivor stories are recounted. These "...punishments passed from generation to generation. Children who had learned abusive ways at boarding school used them on their own children." In this way, the trauma of the boarding schools passed from one generation to the next.

One very informative and interesting aspect of Stealing Little Moon is the author's in-depth explanation of some Ponca cultural practices and how the loss of them had a profound affect on the Ponca children. When Indian children arrived at a boarding school their hair, which was often braided, was cut. Jones' explains, "The act of braiding our hair is filled with prayer. With each braid we are communicating with Wa KoN Da (God) and asking for mercy, healing, safety, clarity, and forgiveness for our infractions..." Later on he explains, "Through time, many have believed that hair is cut only under high-stress conditions, for instance when a loved one dies. It is a symbol of mourning. Long hair that is cut then disconnects a person from the community for one year, while it grows back. White school administrators may have thought that they were only changing the children's fashion. But for Elizabeth and the children with her, having their hair cut represented death." 

Another practice in the boarding schools was the forbidding of Indian children from speaking in their mother tongue. Jones writes, "For every people on Earth, language is our identity and our connection to the world...Your own language carried ancient meanings and connections to Earth and all life..." Like many societies, the Ponca had an oral tradition that was a significant part of their culture. "Lost with language would also be their stories. Some stories hold the key to passing down our tribal values and ethics. They tell Ponca children who they are, what we expect from life, and how we interact with one another. They tell us the history of our people and what we believe in...But the greatest connection to our language and our selfhood is knowledge of our mythology...These stories contain many pearls of wisdom, all told in continuing narratives that are funny, tragic, mystifying, dangerous, and beautiful, oh so beautiful." Ironically, it would be an American Indian language that would help the Americans during World War II, the very language they were trying to destroy.

Besides outlining the many abuses that occurred in the American Indian boarding schools, Jones also focuses on the efforts from the 1950's onward to reclaim pride in American Indian identity and to reclaim Indian cultural practices like the Sun Dance which was one outlawed.  Paralleling the Black civil rights movement, the American Indian movement advocated for better education, housing and healthcare, the restoration of stolen Indian land and the repeal of unfair policies and treaties. 

Dan Sasuweh Jones' writing is passionate, rich in facts and details. Although he never attended an American Indian boarding school, the boarding school story is his and his family's: its intergenerational impact extending down from his grandmother and mother and her siblings to his own generation. As with many American Indian families, the struggle to reclaim their cultural heritage and identity has been challenging and ongoing. 

Jones includes many black and white photographs and also many sidebars which offer addition information on important people and events. Features include the Ponca Trail of Tears, Ponca values, the Returned, Runaways, Code Talkers, Red Power is Born, Wounded Knee Massacre 1890 and many more.  Especially poignant are the before and after photographs of various American Indian children. The before photographs show young children, proud and dignified in their traditional clothing with long hair in sharp contrast to the after photographs where an air of sadness permeates their bearing, hair shorn and wearing a uniform.  The Ponca Trail of Tear

Stealing Little Moon is both heartbreaking and hopeful: it is a difficult read. What was done to American Indian children and their families is truly difficult to comprehend but Stealing Little Moon is part of truth telling that will hopefully lead to healing and reconciliation.

Book Details:

Stealing Little Moon: The Legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools by Dan Sasuweh Jones
New York: Scholastic Focus      2024
284 pp.

Uprooted by Ruth Chan

Uprooted is a memoir about going back to your family's country of origin. 

It is the summer of 1993 and Ruth Chan is spending one last day with her best friends at Canada's Wonderland. In two days, she will be leaving Canada behind and moving with her parents to Hong Kong. Ruth and her friends promise to write each other. Almost all of Ruth's mother's family live in Hong Kong. Ruth visited the city when she was five years old and doesn't have pleasant memories. 

After spending the next day packing up her room, they drop her older brother, Goh  off at his boarding school. With only one year left, it makes sense for him to stay in Canada. On their last night at home, Ruth and her dad have their last "talk-to-talk" in Canada. He wants to tell her about how he came to be born in a barn. It is a story her father's older sister has told many times before. Her father stops his telling despite Ruth wanting him to continue. He tells her that when they continue the story, they will be in Hong Kong. He reminds Ruth that "The unknown is simply a part of life."

After a fifteen hour flight, Ruth and her parents arrive in Hong Kong. Ruth notices everyone looks like her, speaks Cantonese and that it is crowded with long lines for everything. Their new home is an apartment on the fifteenth floor of a high rise. After several days of unpacking and organizing her new bedroom, on day seven, Ruth and her parents go to visit her mother's family. Ruth is overwhelmed at the family gathering. The understands Cantonese but isn't fluent in it. And some of the Chinese customs and values she doesn't know. Ruth feels like she doesn't fit in and hides in the kitchen with the cat.

Ruth's father leaves for his work in China and Ruth starts classes at the German Swiss International School. On her first day she makes a new friend, Bonnie who is from Hong Kong but has been living in Australia for the past three years. But as the days go by, Ruth finds adapting to a different culture and settling into life in Hong Kong is far more challenging than she anticipated.

Discussion

Uprooted is based on Ruth Chan's own experience when her family returned to Hong Kong. She was thirteen years old and had lived in Toronto.  The move meant leaving behind everything familiar and stepping into the unknown. 

Ruth Chan's parents came to Canada to attend university and then stayed. They returned to Hong Kong when she was thirteen-years-old. She attended Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts after graduating from high school in Beijing, China. There she studied a double major in developmental psychology and studio art. Chan also completed the Arts in Education program at the Harvard Education School. This led her into a temporary career, teaching art to school children in Boston's Chinatown and also in Washington, D.C. Eventually she came to realize teaching was not really the career she wanted and she gradually moved into studio art, illustrating children's books. This led to Chan creating her first graphic novel, Uprooted.  

Uprooted is not just about Ruth's own experience in moving back to Hong Kong but also tells a story within her personal story, that of her father and his family fleeing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. This story has been repeatedly told by grandparents and aunts and Ruth knows it well.  The two stories carry the common theme, that of being uprooted from everything familiar and having to meet new challenges in a new place. Ruth Chan like her grandmother, had been uprooted from everything familiar. Chan weaves these two stories together by having Ruth's father tell her about his family during their sporadic "talk-to-talk" sessions at bedtime, as they leave Toronto and are beginning life in Hong Kong. 

When her father first begins his retelling on their last night in Toronto, Ruth tells him "I know the story, but it feels different when you're telling it this time. Like it's more real or something." In fact it does seem more real to Ruth because she's living leaving her home and going somewhere very different, just as her grandparents did when they left their village and fled into the mountains. 

When Ruth's father's family arrives in the village of Pong Fa, they struggle to find a place to stay. As they find refuge in a barn with a full pigsty, Ruth's grandparents tell their children to be patient, that  "...soon they will find where they belong." Previously, Ruth's grandparents and their family would have found this very uncomfortable, but they were able to find the good in their situation, enjoying the pigs. It is a message for Ruth that she too will find her place and that there are good things in Hong Kong.

In another "Talk-to-Talk", Ruth's father describes how after he was born two months premature, he struggled to live. With not enough food, Ruth's grandmother couldn't nurse him and she was told to let her son die. But her grandmother refused, courageously persevering in feeding him. That baby grew up to be Ruth's father and he now tells Ruth it was his mother courage, perseverance and patience that saved him. These are qualities he recognizes in Ruth.

When Ruth's grandfather chased off bandits determined to steal from his family, Ruth's father tells her he did this despite being very ill. Ruth feels  this was "gutsy", a trait her father tells her she also has. Her father's story of his family's struggle in a new place helps Ruth understand that she's not the first one to experience the feeling of struggling to belong and that it takes courage, perseverance and patience to gradually feel welcome in a new place.

In telling these two stories, Ruth was able "to honor the incredible strength that my Mah Mah, my aunt, and my parents possessed in overcoming all the things that came their way..." and to recognize how her own challenges made her grow into the person she is today. 

In Hong Kong, Ruth encounters unexpected bias in her new home: "...all of a sudden, in Hong Kong, I wasn't 'Chinese' enough because I didn't speak Cantonese well and dressed differently..." She feels "...lonely in a new place, like no one understood me or seemed to care about how I was doing." Ruth feels that both her parents are distracted and unaware of her struggles: her father is working China most of the time, and her mother seems absorbed with reconnecting with her family and friends. However, when Ruth does finally tell her parents that she feels lost, they point out to her all the ways she has changed and grown. Ruth herself comes to realize that she's learning new skills, like becoming more fluent in Cantonese, making new friends such as Bonnie, and more independent as she learns to find her way around Hong Kong.  In fact, she's doing so well that when her older brother, Goh visits for Christmas, she is able to take him around the city just like a local.

Uprooted is a engaging, realistic story about what it's like to move to a new place to live and that it can take courage, perseverance and patience to find where you belong.

Book Details:

Uprooted. A memoir about what happens when your family moves back. by Ruth Chan
New York: Roaring Brook Press 

285 pp.

Up, Up, Ever Up! by Anita Yasuda

Up, Up, Ever Up! is the story of Junko Takei, a Japanese woman determined to be a mountain climber.

Junko grew up under the sakura trees on her mountain, dreaming of climbing. At the age of ten, Junko along with her friends, climbed Mount Chausu. On their climb they encountered hot springs, strong smells, and boulders. 

When she eventually left Miharu for the city of Tokyo, Junko continued to long for the mountains. She was able to join a mountaineering club that accepted women. Each weekend Junko laced on her boots and joined other climbers heading up mountains. In her adventures, Junko met someone who also loved climbing. They married and had a family.

As her family grew, Junko , along with other women climbers planned an expedition to Mount Everest. At this time, no woman had succeeded in climbing the world's highest mountain. 

Discussion

Junko Ishibashi was born September 22, 1939 in Miharu, a town located in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. She was the third youngest of seven daughters. When she was ten years old, Junko developed a love of climbing on a school trip to Mount Nasu (also known as Mount Chausu) in Tochigi Prefecture. Junko loved the mountain landscapes she encountered on the climbs. However, climbing was an expensive sport and one that was male dominated so Junko did not undertake many climbs while a high school student.

She studied at Showa Women's University from 1958 to 1962, earning a degree in American and English Literature. After graduating Junko joined several climbing groups which were for men only. Although some members were not welcoming, Junko was able to climb all the major mountains in Japan including Mount Fiji. 

In 1966 Junko married Masanobu Tabei who she had met during a climb on Mount Tanigawa. She was twenty-seven years old. Junko and Masanobu eventually had two children. In 1969, Junko founded a women's climbing club, Joshi-Tohan Club. She formed the club mainly as a result of how she was treated by men in the climbing clubs. The first expedition the Joshi-Tohan Club undertook was to successfully climb Annapurna III in May of 1970. They were the first women and Japanese to summit the mountain. 

In 1971, the Joshi-Tohan Club applied for a permit to climb Mount Everest but it wasn't until 1975 that the club received a place in the formal climbing schedule. The Mount Everest team of fifteen members was led by Eiko Hisano and used the same route that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay took in 1953. Two of the women were mothers, while many others had professional jobs. They encountered opposition as they raised funds for the trip. They were able to begin their climb in 1975, after years and months of fund-raising and training. On May 4, while camping at 20,000 ft, an avalanche struck, burying Tabei and four fellow climbers. They were dug out by the Sherpas accompanying the expedition. Tabei was injured in this accident but recovered and was able to resume the climb.

Tabei was chosen by Hisano to make the final ascent to the peak, after altitude sickness left the team with only enough oxygen tanks for one woman to make the climb. Tabei along with her sherpa guide Ang Shering, reached the summit of Mount Everest on May 16, 1975. She was the first woman to summit Everest, and only the thirty-sixth person to do so. 

By 1992, Junko Tabei became the first woman to complete the Seven Summits, climbing Kilimanjaro in 1980, Aconcagua in 1987, Denali in 1988, Elbrus in 1989, Mount Vinson in 1991, and Puncak Jaya in 1992. Throughout the 1990's and into the early 2000's, Tabei continued to take part in many all women's mountaineering expeditions. 

In later years, Junko Tabei advocated for  the conservation of mountain ecosystems like that of Mount Everest. She completed post-doctorate studies at Kyushu University with special focus on the mounting human waste being left on Everest and other mountains by climbers. Diagnosed in 2012 with cancer of the peritoneum, Junko Tabei passed away in 2016.

Up, Up, Ever Up! offers younger readers an engaging introduction to the remarkable life and accomplishments of  mountaineer, author, teacher, conservationist and mother, Junko Tabei. Yasuda captures the determination and quiet perseverance of Tabei as she turned her childhood love of the mountains into a lifelong passion. She was able to overcome the resistance of those who told her women did not belong in mountaineering, forging a path, step by step, for those women who would come after. Tabei, who was a modest person and uncomfortable with the fame her accomplishments brought, was able to use her notoriety to help the people of Nepal and to advocate for more responsible mountaineering practices and tourism. Tabei was also one of few women who attended university, at a time when women were discouraged from seeking a higher education. Tabei's motto was "Do not give up. Keep on your quest!"

Portraying Junko Tabei's journey upwards are the lovely illustrations done by Japanese illustrator, Yuko Shimizu. The illustrations for Up, Up, Ever Up! were rendered using "a Japanese calligraphy brush that was specifically made for Buddhist sutra and black India ink to make drawings on watercolor paper." These were then coloured digitally using Adobe Photoshop. Like Junko Tabei, Shimizu's mother also attended Showa Women's University.

Up, Up, Ever Up! is a must-read for young girls as an encouragement to follow their dreams, even when they seem especially impossible! Yasuda has included an Author's Note, a Timeline, a Glossary, and a detailed Bibliography for further reading.

Book Details:

Up, Up, Ever Up! by Anita Yasuda

New York: Clarion Books    2024

Sea Without A Shore by Barbara Rosenstock

Sea Without A Shore explores the unique world of the Sargasso Sea, the only sea without a shore.  It is located hundreds of miles into the Atlantic Ocean and is saltier and warmer than the surrounding ocean.

It seems like an ocean desert except there are rafts of Sargassum, which is not a plant but an algae. It grows stipes and blades and has gas-filled globes which keep the weed on the ocean surface.

The Sargassum grows from a small branch that has broken away and as it does so, tiny creatures come to live on it: "...bryozoans, feathery hydroids and spiraled tube worms" that feed on the microscopic life. There are "rubbery snails, waving anemones and spongy nudibranchs" that stalk and eat. 

The floating Sargassum offers " a place for wandering creatures to explore: pinching crabs, skittering shrimp, buggy amphipods." They scavenge, eating dead and living plants and animals, cleaning up the weeds."  This allows young creatures like "pointy swordfish, stocky jacks, and blunt-nosed mahi mahi to grow as they eat tiny bits of food that falls off the weed."  

The Sargassum also contains strange creatures like "...toothless pipefish, riffling flatworm, and crawling frogfish."  The pipefish sucks up amphipods, while the frogfish lure's it's prey, which it swallows whole.

There is life both above and below but the Sargassum is a home to a diverse community.

Discussion

Sea Without A Shore tells the story of how a new Sargassum seaweed fragment develops a growing community. Author Barbara Rosenstock was motivated to research the Sargasso Sea after encountering tangled seaweed on a beach in the Dominican Republic.

The Sargasso Sea encompasses an area that is two thousand miles long and seven hundred miles wide. It takes it's name from the Sargassum seaweed that is free floating and that reproduces "vegetatively" - that is without seeds or spores. The Sargasso Sea has no land borders. Instead its borders are four ocean currents: to the west the Gulf Stream, to the north the North Atlantic current, to the east the Canary Current, and to the south the North Atlantic Equatorial current. 

In her Research Note, Rosenstock writes that she and illustrator, Katherine Roy met with oceanographers, Dr. Kerry Whittaker assistant professor at Corning School of Oceanography, Maine Marine Academy and Dr. Robbie Smith, curator, Bermuda Natural History Museum,  in Bermuda to research the Sargassum. Bermuda is the only landmass within the Sargasso Sea. The oceanographers took them to the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo to view the ocean life exhibits. They also examined fresh Sargassum to see the various sea creatures that live in the weed.

Based on her research, Rosenstock realized that she could not feature all the life in the Sargasso Sea into one picture book. Instead, she presents a simplified story of this open ocean ecosystem, highlighting both its diversity and how life within the Sargassum is interconnected. Rosenstock employs short descriptive phrases to describe the various sea creatures and these descriptions are accompanied by the beautiful illustrations by Katherine Roy. 

Rosenstock has included an map of the Sargasso Sea framed by the sea life mentioned in the book. Readers can return to the illustrations to locate these creatures as they are mentioned in the picture book. There is also a short Afterword by Dr. Sylvia Earle, a former chief scientist of NOAA, and currently president and chairman of Mission Blue, an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. There are full colour photographs of a cluster of Sargassum and of the Sargassum frogfish, a Research Note by the author, a note on Too Much Sargassum?, and a list of Sources.

The Sargasso Sea is believed to have existed for at least ten thousand years and its continued may depend on future generations knowing and understanding this unique ocean ecosystem.

Book Details:

Sea Without A Shore, Life in the Sargasso by Barbara Rosenstock

New York: Norton Young Readers     2024