On the other, I prefer a dramatic arc pulling me from Point A to Point B. On the one hand, it’s nice to encounter a book bravely chock full of interesting side trips. He also says that his questions, which launched him on this journey, can, like ocean currents, carry you away. A teacher from Manhattan with a special interest in “Moby-Dick,” he seeks and finds plenty of meaning in the voyage of this modern-day icon. Such a travel agent is, however, the perfect enabler for a writer of Hohn’s penchant for wit. He explains that “happenstance, my travel agent, is a terrible travel agent,” in part because destinations and accommodations were revealed as he went and not usually the height of comfort. His book is launched with starred reviews and hearty cheers. That he doesn’t have a handy “elevator speech” has not been much of a detriment. It is: “The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who went in Search of Them.” I saw the author speak recently and he spent an equivalent amount of time in advance of his reading detailing the many angles of examination. “Moby-Duck” has lengthy subtitle because it’s not an easy book to describe. The freed fleet of Floatees (a mix of yellow ducks, red beavers, green frogs, blue turtles) inspired not just Hohn but advertising agencies, journalists and the author of a children’s book. Before the story - and the journey - conclude, Hohn has himself interacted with dozens of characters studying floating garbage patches, cleaning up remote beaches, working in quirky research labs, research vessels and even duckie manufacturing plants in China. It was then that a 20-foot-long shipping container carrying plastic toys commissioned by a toy company in Avon, Mass., was flung from a freighter during a storm in the North Pacific.īy tracking currents and newspaper articles, and by consulting oceanographers and the most ardent beachcombers, Hohn finds that some of the toys’ first landfall was Kruzof Island, Alaska, in the fall of ’92.

Hohn, with his full tank of curiosity fueling him ever onward and his busy mind working the language into artful and hilarious configurations, is the perfect mouthpiece for 28,800 hatchlings set adrift on Jan. Plastic as transformed into the irresistible happy face of a duck is nonetheless a grinning menace of enormous proportions. We also learn that the way of the duck is the way of the world’s cast-away plastic. In Donovan Hohn’s feat of research and clever writing, we learn a lot about unfettered voyage, the ocean, the disaster that is plastic, garbage in general and whatever else a plastic duck interacts with on its journey of nearly endless discovery. $27.95.Ī rubber duckie, unconfined by the porcelain walls of a tub, has quite a taste for travel.

Moby duck by donovan hohn