Sea Turtles - Books by Eric Douglas

A couple years ago, as I read through the umpteenth Magic Treehouse book with my daughters, I realized that you can communicate important historical or scientific concepts to kids—you just have to make it fun. About that same time, I also remembered that A) I am a writer and B) I make a living talking and writing about diving and the ocean. From there, it was a fairly simple leap to decide to write a children’s chapter book that my girls could read and enjoy.

That was the easy part. The much harder part was thinking about what to actually write about. Even more difficult was how to write it at the appropriate level. I write a lot for adults – and usually that comes in at around the 8^th grade level. But when you’re writing for kids it has to be believable and understandable, but not too simple either. Kids will get bored or annoyed when something is too far above them or two far below them.

I finally settled on sea turtles. Most divers will tell you turtles are one of the coolest big critters to see in the ocean. They are infinitely graceful and at ease in the water. They move slowly and majestically – well it seems slow. But if you get in a turtle’s way, or make it uneasy, and you will quickly see it swimming away and there is no chance you’ll ever catch it.

Sea turtles are also endangered. The pressures of human development, trash in the ocean and declining habitats make it important that we protect them. Even more significant, sea turtles are a big, cool creature. And if we protect them, we end up making the oceans better for all the animals –and for us at the same time. In some ways, sea turtles and other large animals become the canaries in the mine. They decline, get sick and die before other animals might, but also while there is still time to correct the damage we have done. Scientists can tell you all the reasons that it is important to protect the ocean and all the ways a healthy ocean supports are lives even if we don’t realize it. But personally, I can’t think of a sadder place than an ocean with no sea turtles.

After the book was finished, friends arranged for me to share the book with the children at Seaside Elementary school in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The kids drew pictures for me to illustrate each chapter. In return, I spent an entire day talking to their classes about sea turtles, diving, writing and everything else they could think of. The pictures they drew became the art used to illustrate the book.

The good people at Oceana believed in this project and took it on as a supplement to their Sea Turtle campaign. They printed 1000 copies of the book and have distributed them at sea turtle functions. But the book is also available online for free. You can download it and share it with your own children.

I have placed a link to the book on my website. Go to www.booksbyeric.com and follow the link from the front page to Oceana’s site. Download the story, email it to friends, neighbors and anyone else you think might be interested. Or, share the link with them. I donated this story to Oceana simply because I want every child in the world to understand and appreciate sea turtles just like my own daughters do..