The copepods are asleep deep down in the sea.
The scientists wonder where the copepods might be.
A copepod story
Meet Callie. She's a Calanus finmarchicus copepod off on an adventure from the deep sea to the Ocean's surface. Copepods are rice-sized crustaceans with huge importance in aquatic environments. The species in our book lives in the Ocean, but there are freshwater copepods, too!
Calanus supports marine life as the food for larger predators including cod, herring, jellies, birds, and whales. Even humans consume copepods in the form of Omega-3 pills.
Callie and The Wall of Water (Callie og vannveggen, in Norwegian) is written for small children to promote ocean literacy. Readers will learn about ecological interactions, marine science research methods, and the novel technologies used by a female-led scientific research team.
By embracing curiosity, rhyme scheme, rhythm, and science, Callie encourages critical thinking, teamwork, and a love for the Ocean.
Join Callie and her friends Cornelia, Karl, and Kai as they travel from the deep in the fjord to the surface waters to find their way to the open ocean. The team encounters obstacles along the way – from hungry cod to a wall of water that keeps them stuck in place. Will the copepods escape to the open ocean?
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Callie and The Wall of Water was inspired by research out of the Lofoten Research Group, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, led by professor Sünnje Basedow. Research science was translated into a poem with accompanying science facts and illustrations.
Interested in the peer-reviewed research articles? Follow the links below:
Callie comes to life on the page through the illustrations by an award-winning children's literature illustrator, Rune Markhus. Andrea and Rune worked together from day 1 to create pictures that present both science and humour, education and fun.
Callie is part of the Research Council of Norway funded project, Small Scientist: promoting ocean literacy in children (project 337631). Callie og vannveggen will be in all Læringsverkstedet daycare centres across Norway in autumn 2023.
Callie is recognized as an UN Ocean Decade endorsed activity.
The science we used
