Author and activist Joel Harper鈥檚 animated聽video is based on his popular children鈥檚 book,聽All the Way to the Ocean. The book and video, which is available for聽download, tell the story of two skateboarding boys, Isaac and James, who journey from the city to the coast to learn how throwing trash down urban storm drains harms the ocean and wildlife. Encountering a talking crane, a surfer, and other characters, the boys are inspired to take action at their school to stop ocean pollution.
Marcia Cross volunteered to narrate the story after Harper ran into her in a Los Angeles bookstore. The 14-minute video, which also stars Amy Smart and Xavier Rudd, features the music of Harper鈥檚 brother, Ben Harper, as well as songs from Jack Johnson and Burning Spear. Surf champions Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton have promoted the book and video to their social media followers, and a percentage of sales of the animated short will benefit Sustainable Surf, a nonprofit focused on ocean issues. We talked to Harper, who lives in Southern California, about the challenges of publishing a book about storm drain pollution and turning it into a movie.
TakePart: How did you become an ocean activist?
Joel Harper:聽My grandmother played a major role in taking care of us growing up, and we spent many weekends at Laguna Beach and Catalina Island around the ocean. When I was 21, I spent a semester abroad in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, worked with abandoned children, teaching English. As I waited for my bus every day, I was hit by the stench of the storm drains and the amount of litter and detritus around these drains. It bummed me out. I鈥檇 pick up the trash along my walks in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
I came home to Claremont after my trip, and they had just started to stencil those bright blue 鈥淣o dumping / This drains to ocean鈥� signs. I鈥檇 ride my bike and walk around town and think, 鈥淲hat a cool symbol.鈥� Then I would notice all the trash in the drains. We鈥檙e here in Claremont where we have the infrastructure and trash receptacles on all the street corners, so how can we have all this trash in the storm drains? On my bike rides, I鈥檇 start bringing trash bags with me, and if I saw something about to go down the drain, I鈥檇 pick it up. Eventually, I wrote the story that became聽All the Way to the Ocean. That was in 1998.
TakePart: How hard was it to get a children鈥檚 book on storm drains published?
Harper:聽Storm drain pollution was not exactly front-page news back then. I met with big publishing houses, to no avail. They wanted to dumb down the book. They thought it was too depressing for kids. They also wanted to print the book in China and wouldn鈥檛 commit to printing in the U.S., and they wouldn鈥檛 commit to using recycled paper. I thought, 鈥淚鈥檓 just going to do this myself.鈥� So I started my own independent publishing company, Freedom Three Publishing.
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