Turn the Tide! Crab Cake by Andrea Tsurumi

UNDER THE SEA WHERE SUNLIGHT TOUCHES SAND LIES A PLACE THAT IS HOME TO MANY INCREDIBLE CREATURES.

Clownfish, Manta Ray, schools of Tangs, Sea Turtle, and Octopus--all are doing their thing. Scallop hops. Deadly poisonous Lionfish does anything he wants!

AND CRAB BAKES CAKES!

Life goes on swimmingly!

Until one morning when there's a SPLASH and a CRASH! Trash sinks all around, metal junk rains down all over the sandy bottom.... The sea creatures are all aghast! What to do? Everyone freezes in place--except for Crab.

CRAB MAKES A CAKE

With Crab providing delicious provender to all, minnow has a suggestion:

WE HAVE TO HELP OUR KELP!

The other sea creatures do what they do best.

SNAPPER SHOVES. DOLPHIN DRAGS. LOBSTER LIFTS.

And Clam claps as the sea animals dump the trash where it belongs, piled on the people pier, topped by placards inked by Octopus:

COME GET YOUR JUNK!

And the kindly Crab goes back to bake more cakes, in Andrea Tsurami's adorable anti-littering, down-by-the-sea story, Crab Cake: Turning the Tide Together (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). Author Tsurami makes good use of rhyme and alliteration in her very readable text and her nautical illustrations and speech balloons give this one the vibes of a comic graphic novel while she reminds her young readers that we've got more than kelp to help in our own treatment of trash. Says Publishers Weekly's starred review, "[A] wholly original and moving affirmation of one crab’s power to bring a community together."