Freeman Virtual Library - I'm a Dumbo Octopus

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Meet Grimpy! He's a dumbo octopus, and he's taking us on a tour of the whole cephalopod class -- underwater creatures such as cuttlefish, nautiluses, octopuses, and squid.

Grimpy knows all about what makes these many-armed marvels so special, like how the coconut octopus uses tools or the cuttlefish talks with color! It seems like every creature has a special ability -- except him. When Grimpy gets stuck on everything a dumbo octopus can't do, the other cephalopods show him why it's great to be a dumbo.

Book Trailer

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Meet the Creator

Anne Lambelet earned a bachelor's degree in illustration from the University of the Arts in 2014 where was awarded top illustration portfolio by a senior. She now lives in Philidelphia with her husband Brice, her adorable dog, Eevee, and her morbidly obese (but also adorable) cat, Fitzgerald.

What attracted you to write books about marine life?

At the age of three, I saw The Little Mermaid. It was my favorite movie for basically my entire childhood and I made my family watch it way too much. Unfortunately, we lived in Iowa, about as far from the ocean as you can get in America. My only move was to consume all the knowledge about the ocean that I could. It started with mythology mostly: Atlantis, Poseidon, sea nymphs, the kraken. But, as I got older, I realized that actual life that exists in the ocean for real is just as magical and alien as anything out of myth. After all, what could be more fascinatingly bizarre than an octopus?

What do you think was the most interesting fact you discovered while researching I'm a Dumbo Octopus!?

My favorite thing was learning about "decoy bodies" where an octopus ejects a small, dense cloud of ink that predators mistake for another octopus. That would take so much skill and intelligence. It felt so beyond any cephalopod super power I'd expected to find.

What do you hope your readers will take away from reading this book?

The ocean is such a weird and wonderful place full of unimaginably strange and interesting creatures, and we've barely scratched the surface as far as understanding them all. There's no need to look to outer space for aliens. There are aliens for the discovering right here! It's so important that we continue learning more about them and even more important that we protect their ecosystem so that they're still there to learn about for decades to come.

A second book in this series comes out in 2026. What can we expect from that sequel?

The second book in the series is going to be all about cetaceans (a.k.a. whales, dolphins, and porpoises). Grimpy won't be making another appearance, but this next book centers around a baby dwarf sperm whale who is just as cute and just as full of interesting facts about aquatic life.