Not Without My Whale

Originally published in Horsham, West Sussex by Maverick Arts Publishing Ltd. in 2016.

Arnold doesn’t want to go to school . . . not without his pet whale! Luckily, his neighbor Dora is full of good ideas! Now they just need to sneak it past their teacher. This story about a boy and his whale helps young children learn to read with colorful illustrations and carefully leveled text.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Alexandra Morton has been called "the Jane Goodall of Canada" because of her passionate thirty-year fight to save British Columbia's wild salmon. Her account of that fight is both inspiring in its own right and a roadmap of resistance. Alexandra Morton came north from California in the early 1980s, following her first love--the northern resident orca. In remote Echo Bay, in the Broughton Archipelago, she found the perfect place to settle into all she had ever dreamed of: a lifetime of observing and learning what these big-brained mammals are saying to each other. She was lucky enough to get there just in time to witness a place of true natural abundance, and learned how to thrive in the wilderness as a scientist and a single mother. Then, in 1989, industrial aquaculture moved into the region, chasing the whales away. Her fisherman neighbours asked her if she would write letters on their behalf to government explaining the damage the farms were doing to the fisheries, and one thing led to another. Soon Alex had shifted her scientific focus to documenting the infectious diseases and parasites that pour from the ocean farm pens of Atlantic salmon into the migration routes of wild Pacific salmon, and then to proving their disastrous impact on wild salmon and the entire ecosystem of the coast. Alex stood against the farms, first representing her community, then alone, and at last as part of an uprising that built around her as ancient Indigenous governance resisted a province and a country that wouldn't obey their own court rulings. She has used her science, many acts of protest and the legal system in her unrelenting efforts to save wild salmon and ultimately the whales--a story that reveals her own doggedness and bravery but also shines a bright light on the ways other humans doggedly resist the truth. Here, she brilliantly calls those humans to account for the sake of us all.

Abigail dreads swimming lessons because all the kids yell, "Abigail is a whale", when she jumps into the pool. But when her swimming teacher suggests that she needs to think light in order to swim well, things begin to turn around. And soon Abigail starts thinking about a lot of things.

A boy and his father discover a whale tangled in their only fishing net. Is the whale dead? While the man worries about losing their net, the boy worries about the whale. He remembers the fear he felt when, caught in a net himself in childhood, he almost drowned before being rescued by his father. When the whale blinks an enormous eye, the boy knows that he has to try to save the creature, no matter how dangerous doing so may be. Expressive and perfectly paced, this powerful story, The Boy and the Whale, by Caldecott Medal–winner Mordicai Gerstein was inspired in part by a real-life video of a whale’s rescue, and the creature’s joyful dance through the waves after being freed.

In many ways, Walter is just like the other young whales. But in one way—the way that seems to matter most—he is different. Walter was born without a tail. All the other young whales have tails, but since Walter does not, he is seen as different. And according to the other whales, different is not good. Different means Walter is not included when the other whales played tug-of-war. Different means he doesn’t get to race. His friends call him a tadpole or turtle, saying his tail is weak and Walter is slow. Walter knows better, of course. His tail does all sorts of amazing things, but the other whales never give him a chance to show them. One day, the ocean feels strangely quiet. Walter is the first to realize all his friends have been caught in a fisherman’s net. They desperately need his help, and for the first time, they see Walter for the amazing whale he is. Walter is a hero, even without his tail. It turns out it’s okay to be different because different can also mean special.

A child and a whale embark on a beautiful journey together in this lyrical, gorgeously illustrated picture book about friendship, hope, and love for the world around us in the vein of The Fisherman & the Whale and Cynthia Rylant’s Life. Where land becomes sky and sky becomes sea, I first saw the whale and the whale first saw me. A child joins a friendly whale for a magical journey of discovery. They sail the blue ocean, dance with dolphins, and tail-splash seagulls. But the child also sees an ocean filled with plastic trash. And that inspires a promise of help, for the whale and all earth’s creatures.

One hundred unusual animals try to squeeze into the pages of this raucous rhyming tale. But will there be room to fit a whole blue whale?