The Boy and the Little Whale

On a bright morning at his grandmother's seaside house, a gap-toothed boy named Leo puts on his yellow raincoat and red rubber boots, takes his rolled-up map and box of crayons, and goes down to the shore. His grandmother, sitting on a driftwood log, explains that the whales are starting their long migration across thousands of miles of ocean, and that the ocean links all their homes. Soon a little blue-grey whale calf with a red ribbon near its tail lifts its head above the waves and confesses that it feels anxious about the huge journey ahead.

Leo sits on a rock, spreads out his map, and starts to draw a bright route for the whale, placing a big orange star at the start and a purple heart at the end, and adding coral reefs, sea turtles, singing humpbacks, seaweed forests, sunshine, and a gentle moon. When a wave splashes the map and the colors blur, Leo finds that the blended shapes look even more lovely, and he turns the smudges into seashells and stars. After tying the finished map with a piece of seaweed, he gives it to the whale, who swims off toward the open sea. This gentle picture-book story by Aysel Banu YAVUZAL can be read on Masal İzle.