Wild Coasts: Exploring Aotearoa's marine reserves

A beautifully illustrated non-fiction picture book that would be perfect for any school library shelf. It is full of fascinating information about sea life, especially the sea life in New Zealand's marine reserves.

This factual picture book delves into six of the 44 marine reserves now in place throughout Aotearoa. With captions, illustrations, maps and story-like text features, this book was very popular with our younger students. The illustrations make it very easy to illicit information from younger students while the text is easy enough for older students to digest as well.

There are many different varieties and species of fish to discover as well as sea birds, nudibranchs and sea cucumbers to learn about. There's a delicate balance of text and illustrations making it an easy read-aloud or the perfect book for students in Years 4–8 to use for a topic study.

Aotearoa prides itself on protecting its marine ecosystems and this non-fiction picture book shows why that's so important to have these safe zones for our precious marine life. There is so much more to marine life than just fish, and this delightful and informative picture book highlights that very well.