GRETA GREEN BUILDS A SUBMARINE

Enthusiastic engineering steers a young environmentalist to a sea success.

Greta loves to dive into the ocean—and into projects. While picking up trash along the shore with her sidekicks—a pompom-beanie–wearing parrot and a crab in a conch—she’s inspired to build a one-person submarine from her recycling finds. Luckily, she has a huge brass-bound barrel to start with, and she’s soon ready to “chase [her] dream” underwater, in an improbable but functional vessel. Descending beneath the waves, Greta is a responsible scientist, recording notes and taking photographs until the sonarless sub grounds on a wreck. While exploring the pirate-flagged ship, she discovers a heap of gold; she earmarks the funds for ocean conservation and vows to further pursue underwater exploration herself. She returns to a “Save the Ocean” celebration with a small crowd of shore supporters. Greta is so moved by her experience that she says, “It’s difficult to find the words,” but Fliess seems to have had no difficulty hitting upon the right ones, conveyed in rhythmical rhyming quatrains. Cooper’s bright, saturated, and slightly stylized illustrations depict a brown-skinned, curly-haired, bespectacled youngster, both determined and joyful. The book’s final pages introduce four real women who contributed meaningfully to oceanography and offers information on subs and shipwrecks.

Sure to empower young scientists entranced by the sea.