Children’s author Kelly Crull, a Sioux Center native who graduated from Dordt College before spending 20 years in Spain and eventually returning to his home state and settling in Des Moines, visited with Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) students on Thursday and held a book signing along with a creative makerspace allowing kids to turn recycled materials into their own art at the Marshalltown Public Library.

Crull is the author of several books including “Washed Ashore: Making Art from Ocean Plastic” and “The Black Mambas: The World’s First Anti-Poaching Unit” — both are conservation themed. The former details how residents of the coastal community of Bandon, Ore. came together to turn ocean plastics into large sculptures, while the latter tells the story of the first 36 women to become park rangers in South Africa and their anti-poaching unit.

At least 90 sculptures have been created in Bandon, and they travel all over the country to places like Ames, Omaha and the Twin Cities, where Crull first saw one of the sculptures himself. The South African anti-poaching unit was recognized with the United Nations Champions of the Earth Award in 2015, which put them on Crull’s radar and inspired him to eventually write a book about them.

It took him about five years to complete the research for “The Black Mambas,” but Crull is happy to take the powerful stories from both books on the road and share them with students.

“I think the overall message would just be using whatever it is you love to do to solve some of the biggest challenges that we face. Ocean plastic is one of those,” he said. “So just seeing an artist who is saying ‘Hey, I’m an artist, but plastic is washing up.’ So that’s free art supplies.”

Crull developed his passion for the oceans during his two decades living on a beach in Spain, but even now that he’s back in the Midwest, he said waste can end up in streams that make their way to rivers and, later on, oceans.

“Kids maybe don’t realize that they can actually affect something,” he said.

To learn more about the author, visit https://kellycrull.com/.