Plastic Sucks!, high interest eco-nuggets for middle school

Plastic Sucks! aims to be a middle elementary through middle school primer on plastic and its impact on the environment. In some ways it squarely hits the objective and for some young readers this will be the go-to book that will start their eco-interests. Let’s break down the book and see if it’s the polymer that will bond your young one to learning more about a substance that we use every day.

Let’s start with what those 10 year-old readers will love about the book. Its information is presented in bite sized nuggets. There are colorful graphs, page sized quotes, illustrations that make you think and interviews with people that work in the recycling industry or 501c3s. The content is presented in a very casual manner that reads like a surfer is telling you about how plastic impacts the environment in ways that you might not have thought about.

 Plastic Sucks! isn’t preachy or too alarmist. The book realistically presents the problems that plastic presents and offers a couple of valid solutions that young people can implement at various levels in their life. Readers of any age will really like the fact that the book has a European bent to it that allows you to see how countries across the pond have tackled the greater issue of recycling.

The book shakes up how it displays the content very well. It’s never boring, with an emerald green page and black trash items on one and then a high contrast white and black page opposite it. The interviews that author Dougie Poynter conducts with ecologist are done in a way that 10 year olds will immediately understand.

The questions are just slightly above what they’d actually say and the information is presented at that upper elementary aged level. The more that I read the book the more I can see a parade of like-minded projects for fifth and sixth grade science festivals that revolve around aspects of its content.  This is one of those books that knows its narrow age range and doesn’t try to demo out of it. Those readers who are over 13 will probably find its loud colors and massive font too young. However, those who are just slightly younger, who are eco-interested in learning about plastic waste will find that Plastic Sucks! is their jam.

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