School Library Journal, April 2001
Starred Review for Interrupted Journey
Large, clear, informative photos draw readers into this look at attempts to save the endangered Kemp’s ridley turtle. Beginning with a 10-year-old boy who finds a nearly dead turtle during his patrol on a Cape Cod beach on a cold November day, Lasky details the efforts of a team of veterinarians, marine biologists, and volunteers to save the life of this turtle and others. The action moves from the New England Aquarium to the Florida Keys to the beaches of Rancho Nuevo, Mexico (with a map to show the way). The writing is so clear and the story so compelling that one almost passes over the beautiful imagery: "the sand is hard and sleek," "the salt water combs over them." This is also beautiful bookmaking, with a crisp layout and interesting font on oversized pages. Although researchers will learn a lot about the Kemp’s ridley turtle, this is primarily an ecological adventure book to be read cover to cover. Ellen Heath, Orchard School, Ridgewood, NJ.
From Booklist
There's a sense of wonder in the simple words and the
huge, thrilling color pictures in this photo-essay about a vanishing species,
the Kemp's ridley turtle. The astonishing, true nature story begins with one
injured juvenile sea turtle and its rescue; then the book moves out to the
general facts about the endangered animal: its life cycle; the hazards, natural
and human, it faces; and the miracle of its survival through an active
international effort. A young boy, Max, and his mother find the
two-or-three-year-old turtle washed up on a beach in Cape Cod. Hatched from an
egg laid on a beach in the Gulf of Mexico, it has been swept off its course, its
journey interrupted. Is it alive or dead? They take it to the New England
Aquarium where vets and volunteers place it in Intensive Care. Then five months
later it's flown to the Turtle Hospital in the Florida Keys, where it's tagged
(so it can be tracked) and released again into the ocean. As in Monarchs
(1993), Lasky and photographer Christopher Knight show the miracle of the small
creatures that survive solitary from birth: "There is no one to teach them
anything. They live alone and they live by instinct." The beautiful photos
include close-ups of one turtle and the people caring for it as well as dazzling
panoramas of its ocean path. The climax is the release, the thrill of seeing it
swim free, the hope that that it will live to lay its own eggs on the beach
where it hatched. Hazel Rochman
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