The Last Seaweed Pie
The Treeple love making things. It’s not the only thing they love – they’re also fans of papaya pies and climbing with lemurs – but making things is what they love the most. They ‘make and mould, sew and saw, bag and tap’. Look at those happy, productive people – surely it’s the way to go? Not like those Seaple, who live underwater and are like the Treeple in many ways – they build things and they make pies of their own (seaweed). But their absolute favourite thing is to ‘watch nature’.
The dangers of over-industrialisation are explored as the Seaple keep watching, with excitement at first, because there are mysterious shapes that might be an octopus or seahorse floating down towards them. But as the sea darkens – perhaps the strongest visual message of this book – they begin to worry. You see, when the Treeple make new things, ‘they threw away the old things, broken or not.’ And it means the Seaple’s home has become uninhabitable.
Learning how to reuse and repurpose old things makes some space both on the ground and the sea, allowing for harmonious, nature-appreciating life for both groups. The environmental moral of the story is clear but gentle, with the illustrations constantly serving as a reminder of how interwoven people and place are (the seaple are watery blobs with seaweed hair; the treeple’s forest origins are evident from their clothing). Tips for how the reader can become an ‘Ocean Hero’ at the end make this an ideal pick to encourage an interest in marine conservation in younger children, without too much finger-wagging.
