SOS Water

With a light touch in both text and illustrations, Yayo, who was originally from Bogatá, Colombia, but who now lives in Montreal, Quebec, deals with a most serious subject as highlighted by his incorporating the Morse Code distress signal in the book’s title – the water pollution being caused by discarded single-use plastic water bottles. Interestingly, Yayo, who dedicated SOS Water to Mother Earth, never uses the words “plastic water bottles” in the text, but, illustration-wise, beginning with the book’s cover, these plastic containers are everywhere.

The story begins with Lalo, a sailor, finding Rosa, a talking but discarded goldfish, in a bowl that has been placed atop two black garbage bags. Rosa, unhappy with her constrained life in a bowl of dirty water, seeks something better, and Lalo volunteers to take Rosa and her bowl and find a more suitable living place for her. Lalo’s search begins at the local park where there’s a pond, but Yayo’s illustration reveals that the pond is unsuitable as the fountain spewing water is actually a plastic water bottle while the five ducklings trailing behind their hen are also plastic bottles. Lalo’s search widens, including the mountains, the Arctic, the jungle, the desert, and, as Lalo puts it, “We went everywhere....And everywhere we found them.” In each locale, Yayo’s illustrations reveal not only the seeming omnipresence of discarded plastic bottles but also their impact on the local flora and fauna. Sometimes the containers appear in their “natural” abandoned state while in other cases they morph into objects like a blimp, a tour boat or a camel’s hump.

A two-page spread that features Lalo rowing a boat atop an ocean of plastic bottles is accompanied by the text, “We wondered where all of this came from.” The wordless response to the pair’s musing is found on the next spread as Lalo, still holding Rosa in her bowl, stands outside a supermarket, watching askance as people trek cartloads of bottled water to their cars.

Though Lalo dreamed of having “magical powers to clean the world’, the fact is that he lacks such abilities and so must simply settle for doing what he can with the help of animal friends. Naturally, with Lalo’s being a sailor, his focus is on cleaning up the seas. After having achieved some success in the cleanup efforts, Lalo returns to fulfill his promise to Rosa and secures her a new home in a magic pond. The reason why the pond is described as “magic” is found in the sentence, “To protect the ecosystem, don’t leave goldfish in waterways because they become invasive”, which appears in very small print at the bottom of the page. It wouldn’t do for Lalo to strive to solve one form of environmental pollution while potentially harming the local environment by introducing a species that does not belong. With the story drawing to a close, Lalo, upon returning home on a very hot day, remarks, “I was so thirsty!”. And his response?

As soon as I came home I drank a
big glass of refreshing TAP WATER!

The illustration accompany this text is just a glass of water, but, underneath the image of the glass, again in very small print, are the words: “Before drinking tap water, check if it is potable.” While including this caution may seem odd, it is a reminder that, just because water flows from a tap, that does not mean the water is necessarily safe to drink (think of Flint Michigan or the boil water advisories on Canadian reserves).

Though SOS Water has a picture book format, its environmental message would resonate with middle and high school readers. The opening scene with the poorly cared for and discarded goldfish will also speak to youngsters who evidence concern about abandoned pets.