by Alli Brydon

Tara, thank you so much for hosting me on your blog (one of my favorites, btw) to celebrate World Ocean Day coming up on June 8th!

World Ocean Day has been designated by the United Nations as a day “for humanity to celebrate the ocean.” On June 8th every year, the global community comes together to recognize how essential our oceans are to our worldwide ecosystem and how important it is that we protect them. There are over a hundred virtual and in-person events planned all across the globe and for all ages, from Coralpalooza to a Smithsonian Museum Shark Talk to tons of beach clean-ups. Check the World Ocean Day event page to see about joining in the celebration!

How does this tie in to children’s books, you ask? My picture book LOBSTAH GAHDEN, which published this spring, contains themes of ocean conservation, collective action, and pollution solutions. I’m also excited to be hosting an Instagram Live reading on June 8th at 4pm ET to celebrate our world’s oceans.

Follow me on Instagram @allibrydon and come along! I might have a special guest or two.

LOBSTAH GAHDEN is a delightfully punny story about ocean life, conservation, and cooperation. Walter is a proud lobstah whose greatest dream is winning the annual Swell Gahdens contest. But, year after year, that honor always goes to his chowdah-head neighbor Milton. One day, when heaps of gahbage show up in their yahds, the rival lobstahs must join forces to find out how to prevent the trash from floating down from above. With wicked ah-some Boston accents, these lobstahs work together to save their gahdens from being ruined by heaps of gahbage.

Our oceans are beautiful, colorful, diverse ecosystems that are home to over a million species of underwater creatures. Unfortunately, humans are putting our friends under the sea at risk by polluting Earth’s oceans daily. Lobstah Gahden helps kids understand the importance of conservation, and additional backmatter about sea life and pollution shows readers practical ways they can help preserve our oceans.

The ocean has always been important to me, having grown up in a beach town on Long Island, in New York. And now my kids are beach babies, too. We all care about ocean conservation, and are trying our best to stop contributing to the problem and be part of the pollution solution.

My co-author, EG Keller, and I hope that young readers will learn about the importance of ocean conservation, especially through the story’s humor and the bonus backmatter pages about sea life and pollution. And we really hope the book will inspire kids to follow Walter and Milton’s lead and help save our world’s oceans.

In addition to celebrating World Ocean Day along with the lobstahs and me, you can check out some other organizations that are doing great work to protect Earth’s oceans:

And here is an IGTV video that I posted in April to celebrate Earth Day. It offers 5 tips to being less “shellfish” and more caring about our Earth.

You can buy LOBSTAH GAHDEN—for ocean activists young and old—at your local indie bookstore, through bookshop.org, and from any brick-and-mortar bookstore or internet retailer.

Take care, chowdah heads…and don’t forget to reduce, reuse, and recycle!

In honor of World Ocean Day, Alli is giving away a copy of LOBSTAH GAHDEN!

Follow her on Instagram and leave a comment below to enter.

A random winner will be selected soon.

Good luck!

Alli Brydon is a writer, kidlit editor, and New Yorker, and when she is not writing or editing, she loves to visit art museums, discover new music, chill at the beach, race her family down ski slopes, explore forests, and read books written for children and not-children. She is the co-author of Lobstah Gahden (Sourcebooks, April 2021) and author of Myths & Legends of the World (Lonely Planet Kids, October 2019). She has fiction and nonfiction children’s books forthcoming with National Geographic Kids, Disney, Odd Dot/Macmillan, and Amazon/Two Lions, and is constantly tuned to the world for new ideas. She is also a children’s book editor with 15 years of experience helping authors and illustrators create outstanding children’s books. Alli now lives with her family in the rolling hills just outside of London.

Learn more about Alli’s work at allibrydon.com (author site) and allibrydoncreative.com (editor site), and follow her on Twitter at @AlliBrydon and on Instagram at @allibrydon.