Early in A. M. Juster’s new children’s picture book, Girlatee, a female manatee named Grace is separated from her parents. Propelled from their favorite eelgrass haunt by a passing motorboat, she finds herself stranded on the beach. Rather than helping, nearby beachgoers spectate. Pulling out their phones, they jostle for pictures with the frightened creature.

In this, Juster smuggles a very timely message into this breezy, lavishly illustrated book. Are the devices on which we increasingly rely obstructing our empathy and intelligence? Are they making it more difficult to raise children with decency, care, imagination? If a children’s book seems like the wrong place to be raising these questions, consider: fully a quarter of three- and four-year-olds in Britain own smartphones.

The illustrative etchings, by Grant Silverstein, underscore the point. A speedboat is depicted cruising past a sign that reads “Slow: Manatees,” thereby signaling to the reader that Grace’s plight is not a random mishap: it is the result of people who should know better refusing their civic obligations for the sake of convenience and pleasure. On the beach, a child is shown posing for photos next to an older gentleman of strikingly similar appearance. Where do children learn bad behavior? If they find scrolling more enjoyable than reading, have we given them reason to think otherwise?

Which is not to say that Juster’s book is preachy or heavy-handed. He introduces his themes – the perils of tech, the seductive lure of voyeurism, our mandate to care for the natural world – with such rhyming grace that many readers may not notice. Girlatee succeeds in the primary task of a children’s book, which is to transport its audience. The story follows a simplified hero’s journey in which Grace is drawn from her home, an idyllic haven where she happily munches on “fish, and octopi, and cranky crabs,” into the human world with its innumerable dangers, and then back into the freedom of the water.

There is a passage in the Book of Job that can be puzzling on first reading. Throughout the book, Job has demanded an explanation from God for his sufferings. Finally, God manifests in a whirlwind and says, in effect, “Have you seen the crocodile? Have you taken note of the ostrich?” The passage conveys something of God’s inscrutability – the things that concern him are not the things that concern us – but also the extent of his love, the breadth of which surpasses human love. “The compassion of man is toward his neighbor; but the compassion of the Lord is toward all flesh,” writes the author of the Wisdom of Sirach (18:13). To which the Wisdom of Solomon adds, “For Thou lovest all things that are, and abhorrest nothing which Thou hast made” (11:24). When we care for other creatures, we extend compassion beyond its human limits and participate in divine love. By encouraging a love of creatures in children, Juster has done just that.