Fifty children’s authors, including Michael Morpurgo, Quentin Blake and Jacqueline Wilson, have come together to call on the book trade to ditch plastic and help save the oceans.
The Authors4Oceans campaign wascreated by the award-winning novelist Lauren St John, whose children’s books include the eco-adventure Dolphin Song and the forthcoming seaside mystery Kat Wolfe Investigates. St John devised the project, which is asking publishers, booksellers and young readers to help halt the amount of plastic being dumped in our oceans, after she ordered a drink in a bookshop, and found it came with a plastic straw.
“There are hundreds of bookshops across the UK, many of which hand out plastic bags, straws and bottles daily,” said St John, who is joined in her crusade by names including Morpurgo, Blake, Wilson, Katherine Rundell and Chris Riddell. “It occurred to me that an alliance of children’s authors, particularly those who write about nature and are passionate about the environment, might have a voice together. And if publishers, literary festivals and some of our young readers joined us, well – together – we could make a real difference.”
Morpurgo, whose novels include Why the Whales Came and War Horse, added: “The greatest weakness we have, the greatest mistake we make is to take the world about us for granted. We use up the Earth we live in at our peril. It is a finite source and we have to remember that. Destroy it, and we destroy ourselves. It is that simple.”
Publishers including Head of Zeus and Knights of have already signed up to the campaign, as has the independent bookseller Octavia’s Bookshop. Pledges for businesses include ending the use of disposable coffee cups and water bottles, and using reusable bags. The campaign is also launching a new competition, Oceans are Not Rubbish, which is calling on children to design and build models of endangered sea creatures out of plastic rubbish, and will be running beach-cleans and festival events to raise awareness of plastic pollution.
Rundell, whose Amazon jungle-set novel The Explorer won the Costa children’s book prize earlier this year, said: “As children’s writers we aim to offer young people a sense of the vast wonder of the world. That world is under threat as never before, and with this campaign we’re saying: we can still save the oceans, if we act now. Not soon, but now.”
The campaign’s supporters also include Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, whose book The Lost Words celebrates the nature words which are disappearing from our vocabularies, as well as bestselling writers Philip Ardagh, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, SF Said and Annabel Pitcher.
