A baby loggerhead turtle hatched on a beach in Australia and swam in the sea for five years before being caught in a net. A fisherman rescued her, and named her Yoshi (good luck in Japanese); he brought her to Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, South Africa, where they kept her for over twenty years before preparing her to be released back into the wild - where she swam across the Indian Ocean, all the way back to Australia where she was born to lay her own eggs.

Back matter: author's note, map of Yoshi's swim, and a video and blog link: https://www.aquarium.co.za/foundation/news/yoshi-has-reached-australia-record-br... ( )

Richard Jones's illustrations are gorgeous, and a large reason I picked this book out for my niece's 3rd birthday book. They are fully digital but have a wonderful textural quality like watercolors or oil pastels, and many (if not most!) of the spreads in this book would be gorgeous as full-size wall art. The way he uses bits of coral-orange and pink in the underwater scenes is so good, and dynamic.

My niece is at the age where she loves anything about animals - especially sea creatures!, and my sister (a kindergarten teacher) always loves getting nonfiction books for the children, so this book seemed like a no brainer. The pictures tell the story as well as the text does, and the diversity of images and textures should give a pre-schooler plenty to get lost in. They certainly do for me! (Speaking of diversity - as a wheelchair user myself, I appreciate that one of the children in an illustration of the Two Oceans Aquarium is in a wheelchair.)

The text of the book is matter of fact and easy to read, switching between paragraphs of a few sentences and split phrases as the story and pacing require. I thought it got a little clunkier in the last few pages, but still easy enough to read out loud. There is some invention about Yoshi's life before she was rescued by the fisherman, but it's based on factual supposition about sea turtles and the waters she would have seen.

Yoshi, Sea Turtle Genius, is very nice and would be great for any nonfiction picture book collection about sea animals - with a bit of geography, too! And, of course, if you're a fan of picture books for the illustrations, it's a must-have. ( )