Bubu's Turtle Tale

The sea feels big when you are small.

On a warm night in a Fijian village, Bubu gathers Samy and Bela close and points up at the stars. See that turtle shining, way up high? Tonight she will tell them how that turtle learned to try.

A tiny turtle taps her way out of the sand and finds an ocean far wider than she is. The waves roll too tall. The night feels too deep. But Old Turtle tells her something worth holding onto: when the dark feels big and you feel small, look to the stars above it all. So she takes one small kick, then another, through coral and darting fish, until a storm rolls across the moon and washes the path home away. Then the clouds pull wide, the stars peep out, and a turtle shape glows above the water to show her the way.

Home isn't only sand and sea. Home's in your heart, wherever you be.

For any child who has stood at the edge of something too big, this is a story about getting there one small kick at a time. And for a Pacific child, it is their own night sky on the page, their own grandmother telling it.

•  Rhyming read-aloud for ages 2 to 7

•  A gentle bedtime story for a child facing something new

•  Book 2 in the Samy & Bela series