 |
The Little Tess the Sea Turtle Gallery
 |
 |
Click to enlarge image
$20 + $4 shipping |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Story Summary · The Science of Little Tess · Story Research
 |
Story Summary
Click to enlarge paintings
Little Tess is an aqua-blue sea turtle! That may or may not have caught your attention. Perhaps she’s a sea turtle for young readers, then. After all, exploring
under the sea can be pretty scary…but not with a blue-green sea turtle as your guide! |
 |
 |
Tess grows up exploring the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and comes to know the stories of the little terrapins who live on mangrove islands off of Florida’s Gulf Coast, and of the migrating birds who nest on these "keys." |
 |
And why do these terrapins live 2-3 miles offshore instead of in the salt marshes where they belong? Well, the mangrove keys are available in southern Florida. And perhaps it’s safer offshore, when you factor in the presence of alligators, crocodiles, and other predators onshore. Who knows? |
 |
 |
The other sea turtles hear a “voice” that guides them to their nesting beaches, usually the same beaches where they were born. But for Little Tess, there is no "voice." How she finds her own specific place to nest is the question, and the journey, that Tess follows from the book’s first pages to the exciting conclusion! |
 |
 |
The Science of Tiny Turtle
Illustrated Glossary of
Native Plants and Animals
As in the other books of the series, Little Tess has an illustrated glossary of native plants and animals found in the book illustrations. For those 5 year olds who already read on a 5th grade level... The glossary is another reason the books "fit" older elementary children as well! |
 |
Story Research
When I was working on the last book in this series, TheTiny Turtle of the Marsh, a book focusing on Diamondback Terrapins,I met a number of researchers along their 16 state range on line. During this time, I also developed a craving to visit some of the 7 subspecies of terrapins I had never seen in person.
In May 2011, aided by one researcher, I visited Ornate Diamondback Terrapins living on black mangrove keys several miles off the Florida coast north of Tampa: We spent two days exploring the offshore keys they lived on by airboat, skimming across shallow waters teeming with sea grass and sponges and beautiful marine algae, also home to manatees, several species of sharks, as well as juvenile sea turtles: Absolutely incredible!
 
 
In October 2011, I was able to visit Mangrove Diamondback Terrapins also on mangrove keys in Florida Bay, south of the Everglades, and offshore of the main islands of the Florida Keys. The terrapins in the area of the northern keys have dark blotches on their bluish skin; further south, below Seven Mile Bridge and six miles off of Key West, the Mangrove Terrapins have smaller dark dots on dark blue skin. Since these mangrove keys are often covered with tidal waters, I couldn’t help wonder where the mother terrapins laid their eggs: This question has eluded 20 years of research!
 
 
But how did the book of terrapins on mangrove keys become a sea turtle book? Well, in 1992, while vacationing on Oak Island below Wilmington, NC, I was able to photograph a small sea turtle nesting not long after noon in full daylight (not the customary nesting time for most species of sea turtles.) With 36 photographs, I was able to identify the turtle as a Kemp’s Ridley, the most endangered of the sea turtles, clearly not at its traditional nesting beach, which is a 20 mile stretch of beach near Rancho Nuevo on the Mexican Gulf Coast.
I was then able to write a short peer-reviewed journal article on the nesting- the first verified nesting of a Kemp’s Ridley on the Atlantic Coast of North America. Well, “my” Ridley, 20 years later, became Little Tess, and through her journeys in the book, connected my Gulf Coast stories of little terrapins on mangrove keys, finally nesting in the Carolinas, as she did in 1992.
For more information and photos of Ornate and Mangrove Terrapins, Kemp’s Ridleys, and the cooperating sea turtle hospitals that care for injured sea turtles along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States, see the 5 pages devoted to these topics in the book Little Tess the Sea Turtle!
 
TOP
|
|
|
|
