9May

All That Trash

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I love Meghan McCarthy’s new book, All That Trash. It’s about the 1987 New York garbage barge scandal. That year, a barge full of garbage floated around the Atlantic Ocean, looking for a place to dump it. Eventually, it ended up back where it started, but in the process it illuminated for the entire nation both how much garbage we produce and also what a huge disposal problem we have.

The story is complicated. It involves lots of people and lots of places. McCarthy doesn’t shy away from the complex, though. She introduces us to many, many people–politicans, businessmen, workers on the barge, reporters–and we hear their voices. But she ingeniously helps us keep them straight by creating tiny portraits of each person, captioned with name and title, to stand next to voice bubbles with what they had to say. The portraits are drawn with her familiar wit. I especially loved that the recurring portrait of the captain of the barge always appears in a cloud of flies. She uses a map to help us keep track of where the barge goes.

The story is compelling and she keeps us moving through it with really effective page layouts and page turns. I especially loved the page where she recreates the photo of the Greenpeace protest–a huge banner unfurled on the barge, which says, “Next Time…Try Recycling.”

The back matter gives even more detail about the story of the barge (the Mob’s involvement!) as well as information about how much garbage we produce as a nation today. A photo essay shows useful and beautiful items built of recycled garbage, an inspiring prompt for kids to be inventive.

All that Trash: The Story of the 1987 Garbage Barge and Our Problem with Stuff by Meghan McCarthy. Paula Wiseman: 2018.

Alyson Beecher hosts the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at kidlitfrenzy.com. Visit there for more great nonfiction picture books!

Tags: environmentalism Paula Wiseman Books

19Jul

Pedal Power

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

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Pedal Power cover shows people of many ages riding bicycles across an Amsterdam canal bridge

I’m on the wonderful Kirby Larson’s blog talking about nonfiction back matter. Please visit!

Our family lived in the Netherlands for several years. We owned a car but seldom used it. It was much, much easier to navigate our ancient town by bike than by car, and with bikes parallel parking was never an issue (though finding an empty bike rack sometimes was!). Two of our children were born while we lived there, and they hated their carseats. Even when the cold North Sea wind blew, they much preferred riding in their bike seats to being cooped up in the car. And our family’s dependence on bicycles was not quirky or unique. For all of our neighbors, bikes were the standard of transportation. So I was astonished to read Pedal Power and learn that it was not so many years ago that bicycles were not the go-to form of transportation in the Netherlands.

In this nonfiction picture book, Allan Drummond traces the history of the bicycle on Dutch streets. He profiles Maartje Rutten, one of the bicycle activists who agitated for traffic changes in the 1970s. He shows, especially in illustrations, how children participated in the protests (and I loved the back matter photographs that show children activists). He makes it clear that change didn’t come about because of a single protest but because of protests and actions over time. This is a wonderful addition to his other books about environmental change, like Green City, and I personally found it very inspiring that such a pervasive cultural change could occur in such a relatively short time.

In the back matter, Drummond talks about his own connection to bicycle community, about traveling to Amsterdam to interview Maartje Rutten, and about the ways bicycles have become important in other cities.

I’ll be returning the copy of the book that I read to my library later today. And I’ll be doing it, of course, on my bicycle.

Pedal Power: How One Community Became the Bicycle Capital of the World by Allan Drummond. Farrar Straus Giroux: 2017.

I participate every Wednesday in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at Kid Lit Frenzy.

Tags: activism environmentalism Farrar Straus Giroux

Annette Bay Pimentel

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All That Trash

Pedal Power