Children's Book Review: The Whale Who Disappeared

As anyone who’s got a birdbath or a minor crush on Chris Packham will know, the years we’re living through are trying ones for the natural world. Most adults who are switched on carry an eco-anxiety around with us like a cold that’s hard to shake. And while we might feel able to shunt this worry to the back of our minds in order to get the hoovering done, it’s easy for us to forget to consider the way that sensitive children must feel, growing up in a world in which the things they’re taught to value the most are also the things that they’re being told are threatened with destruction. 

In comes children’s writer Emma Oldham with ‘The Whale Who Disappeared’, which offers solace and a breath of new inspiration for our most junior environmentalists. The book stars six-year-old Arry, a precocious, stout-hearted girl who loves nothing more than the ‘sparkling waves and magic rockpool caves’ near her seaside home. When her grandmother tells her that the million sperm whales that once occupied the nearby seas might soon dwindle away to nothing, Arry responds not by asking for a Calippo - but with action. An activist-in-training, she rallies her schoolmates and writes to the Prime Minister, and soon finds that this determination is just what it takes to turn the tide; to get new seagrass planted, to finally see a whale in the flesh, to watch ‘colourful puffins’ return at last to the ocean.

Illustrator William Monteiro provides this colour. Within this stirring story, Arry and her gran are drawn with bold and characterful expressions and we are soon treated to views that are sweepingly subaquatic, hidden within which are subtle background details that make this a treat to read alongside a young reader. Emma Oldham’s writing is clear and at times musical, linked together fluidly with end-rhymes and sprinkled with one or two longer words like ‘captivated’ which will be a useful addition to a clever child’s vocabulary.

Altogether, there’s much to recommend about a book that can so deftly weave together a small-scale personal tale with a wider clarion call about the world we need to look after. It’s a book that won’t just teach children to value the natural world - it’s easy to get kids excited about beautiful animals - but, crucially, that we are the ones who will need to work hard to protect nature. And for as long as there are Lions Left, too - all that adds up to a big LeftLion endorsement.

You can order The Whale Who Disappeared here.