Beyond the tideline, there are 10,000 types of seaweed. An essential ingredient for life on Earth, seaweed has sustained animals and people for many thousands of years. Did you know that feeding seaweed to cows can reduce the methane in their burps and farts by more than half? Or that a forest of kelp absorbs more carbon than a tropical rainforest of the same size? We can even make edible bioplastics from seaweed.
Complete with a guide to common seaweeds and foraging guidelines, With a Little Kelp from Our Friends educates, inspires and encourages respect for the natural world – an important message for everyone (budding environmentalist or not).
Author Mathew Bate is a writer and poet with an interest in changing the narrative of climate change and how people relate to natural landscapes. From ancient history and mythology to modern uses in food, health and medicine, this book allows readers aged 7+ to discover how cool seaweed is, and how it could even help tackle climate change.
The book features charming illustrations by Liz Rowland combined with Bate’s bite-sized bursts of information and fun facts that are easy to absorb. This is shown through Rowland’s oil paint and pastel illustrations, which are captivating and authentic – she even foraged for seaweed in her hometown in Wales, United Kingdom to collect samples for her illustrations.
Young readers can put their newfound knowledge to practice with a host of chapters at the end of the book which includes:
- A guide to common seaweeds where you can learn facts about 23 different types of seaweeds. Fact 11 is about Bull Kelp, which is edible, brown, grows up to 335m long (wow!) and forms dense kelp forests in the Northern Hemisphere. These facts are also followed by a double-page spread of illustrations showing what each type of seaweed looks like.
- Activities for the whole family where you can learn to make your own seaweed mask, forage for seaweed, birthday soup, create your acidic ocean, and make a seaweed scrapbook!
- Glossary of key terms such as ‘biodegradable,’ ‘bacteria,’ ‘spore,’ and ‘plankton.’
Bate is passionate about regenerative agriculture and has developed a deep affinity for seaweed and its remedial power. He extends this passion to studying regenerative agriculture at Southern Cross University (the first degree of its kind in the world), and in this book; where today’s young readers are our future leaders with the power to make a difference to climate change, agriculture, and the environment.
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