New Arrivals! Nonfiction Picture Book: Plastic Ahoy! Investigating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

This was a new arrival to my library today, and it's an excellent nonfiction science-inspired book, very like The Dolphins of Shark Bay, only this time focused more on much smaller life-forms.

Plastic Ahoy! Investigating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Patricia Newman, photographs by Annie Crawley
ISBN: 9781467712835
Read November 6, 2014

We follow a trio of (women) graduate students on their scientific mission to the Pacific Garbage Patch, each with their own specific purpose, experiments, and scientific focus, and after being introduced to the mechanics of the ship and the scientific method, and to the Garbage Patch itself, we follow along with each student as she explains how she got interested in oceanography, how she became interested in the Garbage Patch, what her experiments are meant to show, and how she's collecting and storing evidence to further her research.  In a really excellent dedication to academic reality, the text doesn't shy away from one girl who does her research, then upon return home, takes her work in a different direction, and doesn't follow up on her Garbage Patch findings at all.

The illustrations are magnificent, and the photos are all scrupulously identified and placed in context.  The overall book focuses on the science being done, with the environmental-clean-up message relegated to the end.  There are extensive Source Notes, a lovely Glossary, and Index, and a page full of varied Further Reading suggestions.

Excellent and interesting nonfiction read that really goes into surprising depth and detail on a specific mission and trio of experimental research.