Review - Plastic Soup

Plastic Soup
by Judith Koppens & Andy Engel
illustrated by Nynke Mare Talsma
Date: 2020
Publisher: Clavis Publishing
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 32
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley

The animal friends are spending the day at the beach. Frog jumps in the water and comes up with a torn plastic bag on his head. Fox thinks Frog looks like a sea monster! But the plastic bag isn’t the only thing that floats in the water. Why is there so much plastic in the sea?

A simple story to introduce children to water pollution and little changes that can make a big difference. For children ages 5 and up.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

Reading this book right now is kind of depressing. It's a story about a group of friends who go to the beach and find a lot of plastic floating in the water. The moral of the story is to avoid using plastic, reuse it if you can't, and choose less wasteful options.

At the moment, though, all of that has gone out the window. Everyone's so afraid of a virus that plastic use has soared, wiping out all the progress we might have made in that area. Reusable bags are banned at the grocery store; you have to get a new one every time. For this reason, I wouldn't recommend this book right now. It's liable to be confusing to kids, who are going to get one message from the book and the opposite message from the world.

Aside from that, it's not a bad story. The illustrations are okay. The translation is a little clunky, though, and the layout of the words on the page makes it difficult to tell who's speaking at times. (There's also a character nodding their speech, so I took points off for that.)

Overall, this is a decent book... but not one that's suitable for the current moment.

Thank you to NetGalley and Clavis Publishing for providing a digital ARC.

Premise: 4/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 2/5
Illustrations: 3/5
Originality: 2/5

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.5 out of 5