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Kupe And The Corals

Author : Jacqueline L. Padilla-Gamino
Published : 2014-08-13

Coral reefs are some of the richest habitats in the world, providing home and grocery for scores of marine species. Too, they serve as storm buffers for the islands and mainlands they rim, and delight countless snorkelers and scuba divers who explore them. A new children's book focuses on coral reefs, and how they're established.

But Kupe and the Corals, written by Jacqueline L. Padilla-Gamino and illustrated by Margjorie Light, seems to miss by just a bit. The problem is that with such a rich subject, with such fascinating marine architecture and vibrant sea life that coral reefs nourish, the book focuses not on those aspects of the reefs but on "bubbles" that are in fact tiny coral larvae.

Kupe is a young boy who lives on an island in French Polynesia and who looks forward to going fishing with his father. One night while fishing he notices "(T)iny pink and light brown bubbles, only about 2 millimeters in diameter, were floating all around their boat. Kupe had heard people talk about the bubbles before, but he had never seen them."

Kupe scoops up a jarful of bubbles that night, and the next day his curiosity leads him to a local research center where he learns the "bubbles" are in fact baby corals.

"A healthy environment is very important for the young corals. Without clean water, it may be hard for them to find a place to settle. If coral cannot settle, other animals that depend on them may not survive either," he is told.

While the 30-page book ends with Kupe returning the coral larvae to the ocean, it is largely silent on how they create such valuable marine habit and attract such diversity of life.

For instance, according to a Defenders of Wildlife page on coral reefsCorals are ancient animals related to jellyfish and anemones. An individual coral is known as a polyp, a very small and simple organism consisting mostly of a stomach topped by a tentacle-bearing mouth. The polyps extend their tentacles at night to sting and ingest tiny organisms called plankton and other small creatures. Thousands of identical polyps live together and form a coral colony. Each polyp excretes a calcium carbonate exoskeleton beneath it and, over long periods of time, the skeletons of many coral colonies add up to build the structure of a coral reef. Many other species – fish, invertebrates, algae and microorganisms – make their homes on and around this reef.

Providing such information could have made Kupe and the Corals a stronger, more intriguing book for its 8-12-year-old audience.

Comments

Does this mean you feature fiction as well as non-fiction about national parks?


If you think discussing a children's educational book invalidates the credibility of NPT, that's really a stretch. Or is there another reason for such a question?


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