Review - Owen at the Park

Owen at the Park
by Scot Ritchie
Date: 2019
Publisher: Groundwood Books
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 32
Format: e-book
Source: library

It’s a busy morning in the park. All along the boulevard, families are picnicking and people are napping, playing checkers and reading on the grass. But Owen and his dad are hard at work, raking and mowing the grass. And today, Owen gets to do the best job all on his own. With his dad’s encouragement, Owen gathers his courage and goes around to everyone in the park. He tells the families, the checkers players and the readers what he has to do, and they rush off. Finally, when the park is empty, it is the moment Owen has been waiting for. He turns the tap for the sprinkler system, and water cascades over the trees and flower beds.

In creating this book, Scot Ritchie was inspired by his trip to the beautiful Tiergarten park in Berlin. Owen at the Park is a sweet story illuminating the small pleasures in everyday life and the excitement of a child taking on new responsibilities.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is nothing but child-labour apologist propaganda. It's not about a child taking on normal responsibilities like cleaning his room or putting away the dishes. It's about a child with a disabled father who can't handle the job on his own, so he uses his kid for free labour. It doesn't mesh with the modern European-like setting. (Why isn't this poor kid in school? Instead, he has to watch everyone else enjoy the park while he does chores in it.)

The illustrations are cartoonish, and wouldn't be out of place in a graphic novel. But they left me cold. (Or maybe I just couldn't get past the whole message of the book.)

Just because Owen likes one aspect of working in the park doesn't make it right. Just because his father can't do his job on his own doesn't mean he gets to use his kid to pick up the slack.

There may not be laws against this sort of thing, but that still doesn't make me like what I read here.

Premise: 1/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 2/5
Illustrations: 2/5
Originality: 2/5

Enjoyment: 0/5

Overall: 1.17 out of 5

Review - Join the No-Plastic Challenge!

Join the No-Plastic Challenge!
by Scot Ritchie
Date: 2019
Publisher: Kids Can Press
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book non-fiction
Pages: 32
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley

For his birthday celebration, Nick has challenged his friends - Yulee, Sally, Pedro and Martin - to spend the day without using any single-use plastic. This means they use their own cloth bags for shopping, they say no thanks to plastic straws and, instead of balloons, they decorate with kites and streamers made of natural materials. The children discover that not using plastic is not that hard. They also learn about what plastic is made of, how much of it surrounds us and how it's polluting our oceans and affecting the food chain. Most importantly, the five friends learn ways to use less - including just saying NO! The book concludes with fun ideas for readers to do a No-Plastic Challenge of their own!

This friendly introduction to a timely and urgent topic is part of Scot Ritchie's popular Exploring Our Community series. It will raise awareness of just how much plastic we use every day, and why that matters. Rather than focusing on the negative, however, the book takes a positive, proactive approach to the subject, empowering children with ideas for what they can do about it. As with all the books in the series, this one features friendly, appealing illustrations and the same diverse cast of characters. It has strong curriculum ties in science, including environmental awareness, sustainability and stewardship. It also offers terrific character education lessons in responsibility, citizenship and initiative.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

I didn't love this. Although, now I know what "nurdles" are, so that's something...

This is a sort of fiction/non-fiction hybrid. The story is about a kid and his birthday party. He wants to have a no-plastic day, in which he and his friends don't use any single-use plastic. There are some decent ideas presented in the book, and it would be a good title in a library's Earth Day collection. However, there are a few nit-picky things that I don't like, and those affected my enjoyment of the book.

There are some somewhat contradictory messages here. At times, the book seems to be saying that all plastic is bad... but then it points out that some plastic can be good. I think there maybe needed to be more emphasis on the evils of single-use plastic, because that's really the issue that's being addressed here. Can you store food in glass containers in your kitchen? Sure. But lots of people also store food in reusable plastic containers. Heck, my mom's still got Tupperware kicking around from the 1970s. (It may be hazardous to human health, but that's a topic for another book. The point is, not all plastic is of the single-use variety.) The topic of straws and the disabled is also brought up, but not satisfactorily addressed; the way it's left, it seems to imply that the disabled are allowed to pollute with single-use plastic straws (with no mention of alternatives such as paper, silicone, or even stainless steel). And there's a scene at the end that kind of turned my stomach. The kids are so proud of themselves for not using any plastic all day, and they want to clean up the plastic that is there so that they can leave the beach better than they found it. The problem? They inexplicably brought their cat with them on this journey (it was even in the ferry cafeteria), and the last scene shows it on the sandy beach. What do cats do with sand? Yeah. They're not exactly leaving that beach better than when they found it. (And the fact that one of the kids is going to use his reusable grocery bag to clean up beach trash just made me want to vomit. They're told to use gloves to pick up the trash, but then they're going to put said trash in a bag they use to carry their groceries?)

The pages that talk about how plastic is made are interesting, and they did teach me some stuff I didn't know before. We all use plastic in our daily lives, and yet I'm sure few of us know how it's actually made.

The inclusion of the dog and cat going everywhere with the kids (even to the grocery store) just rubs me the wrong way. I think I would've felt more favourable toward this book in general if I hadn't been distracted by that. What do the dog and cat have to do with single-use plastic, anyway? They don't need to be there. (Also, please don't show me kids putting filthy trash in their reusable bags. That just makes the encouragement to use your own bags at the bulk bins even more disgusting.)

Thank you to NetGalley and Kids Can Press for providing a digital ARC.

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

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.67 out of 5