In 1992, a container of rubber ducks, turtles and other creatures tumbled off a freighter in the seas southwest of Alaska. It wasn't long before they started showing up on the beaches of Alaska. A few years later, the ducks made it to the Atlantic seaboard.
Intrigued by this massive duck migration, Donovan Hohn began investigating the story of these wandering bath toys. His wonderful book on the topic, Moby-Duck, describes the birth of these creatures in China and their subsequent wanderings.
I'm now reading Moby-Duck and I recommend it to you for the following reasons:
1. Who doesn't love yellow rubber ducks? Squeak!
2. Donovan Hohn writes beautifully. Really, he writes the way I would write if had his talent and industry, which I don't.
3. Moby-Duck takes a seemingly ordinary occurrence and builds into into a masterful narrative of ocean currents, goofball beachcombers, Hong Kong toy fairs, and children's toys.
4. Who wouldn't want to read a book with such a funny pun as its title?
Take a voyage with Moby-Duck - because one did survive the wreck.
Photo by Flickr user Jason Ahrns. Used under Creative Commons License.
Sounds like a wonderful book. I have always thought that we could study the whole world - the earth, the people, the interactions - through picking any random object - say peanut butter - and following where it comes from and where it goes to.
Posted by: David Rynick | October 04, 2011 at 03:44 AM