Blue Spaghetti: A Book with a social conscience

Lucy, Nina, Megan and Luke Howard holding Blue Spaghetti a book inspired by author Nicola Leigh's stay with the family. Photo / Rosalie Willis

Devised from a spelling mistake, Blue Spaghetti is a book with a social conscience.

Talking about plastic use and how so much of it ends up in the ocean, Blue Spaghetti's message goes even deeper when you know how the book came about.

The story goes that Nicola Leigh was staying with the Howard family in Raumati as an au pair in 2014 when she was helping Luke, now aged 12, with his homework.

"Luke was really passionate about albatrosses for a while and being dyslexic he asked Nicola, who is also dyslexic, how to spell albatross while doing homework," said his mother Megan.

"She spelt it like a-l-b-e-r-t-r-o-s-s, like a name Albert Ross.

"When they realised their mistake they laughed about it and created this character called Albert Ross.

"They started researching albatrosses and Nicola felt obliged to talk to Luke about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the floating island of plastic, twice the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean."

They also looked at the famous picture by filmmaker Chris Jordan of a deceased albatross with its stomach filled with plastic.

"I am very interested in how humans use and waste plastic and I try not to live without using plastic and it's not easy," Nicola said.

With almost every piece of plastic that was ever made still existing in some shape or form Nicola asked Luke how they could help fix the problem.

She then devised the story from their ideas, went back home to Liverpool and wrote the book.

She then got Luke's sisters Nina and Lucy to draw pictures for the book.

"Luke and Nicola were the creative talent and Nina and Lucy were the artistic talent," said Megan.

"It was always meant to be a family effort to inspire Luke's creativity because of his dyslexia.

"He was going through a patch where he thought he couldn't write stories or read and spell.

"Nicola worked really hard on this with him and she helped him gain confidence," she said.

"They had a great time with it, sparring off each other's creativity."

This also led the family to be conscious of using less plastic.

The book is aimed at young readers and adults who want to open up a conversation about plastic pollution and how it affects marine life.

"As well as the plastics message I think this book is made in recognition that creativity doesn't have to stop with dyslexia.

"Creativity can come from anywhere. It doesn't have to be from someone who can spell."
The book has just been released on Amazon.

Check out the Facebook page Albert Ross The Albatross — Blue Spaghetti for more information and links to purchase the book online.