18th March Global Recycling Day

Global Recycling Day, celebrated on March 18 every year, is a recycling initiative that encourages us to look at our garbage in a new light. There are several ways to recycle that allow some materials to be reused multiple times.

The yearly celebration is all about getting people to waste as little as possible, reuse whenever possible, and encouraging world leaders to work together to recycle more.

The Global Recycling Foundation, which organises the annual day, says recycling is so important because it stops 700 million of tonnes of carbon emissions each year. 

Polly Faber's new book arrives just in time!

But, there is an abundance of books on this topic, both informative texts and imaginative. Stories include themes of recycling clothes, recycling toys, making things from rubbish...

Do you know Maryann Hoberman's poem 

I Like Old Clothes  by Maryann Hoberman and Patrice Barton is an exuberant celebration of hand-me-down clothes-is just as relevant and accessible today as it was over 30 years ago. The resourceful protagonist  likes old clothes for their "history" and "mystery."

Artists started recycling materials in the early 1900s. Read Found  by Liza Holzl for some really good ideas for what you can make with found objects.

Pablo Picasso used cardboard instead of paint. Marcel Duchamp called a bicycle wheel art and Raoul Hausemann made a sculpture out of an old shopkeeper’s dummy. Instead of using traditional materials such as paint, more and more artists started using found materials like newspapers, old photographs and bits of furniture. And they are still doing it today. Find out how these artists, using found materials, changed the art world. Be inspired to create your own masterpieces!

Rubbish? Don't Throw it Away  by Linda Newbery and Katie Rewse is a lively picture book that shows very young children that recycling can be fun! From pine cones on the grass to old coat- hangers in the cupboard, from empty cardboard boxes to unwanted curtains, used wrapping paper, yogurt pots, odd socks, sinks and fallen leaves What can we do with all this stuff that nobody wants?

What do you do when you grow out of something?

The Red Bicycle  by Jude Isabella and Simone Shin makes the main character  a bicycle that starts its life like so many bicycles in North America, being owned and ridden by a young boy. The boy, Leo, treasures his bicycle so much he gives it a name --- Big Red, but eventually Leo outgrows Big Red, and this is where the bicycle's story takes a turn from the everyday, because Leo decides to donate it to an organization that ships bicycles to Africa. Big Red is sent to Burkina Faso, in West Africa, where it finds a home with Alisetta, who uses it to gain quicker access to her family's sorghum field and to the market. Then, over time, it finds its way to a young woman named Haridata, who has a new purpose for the bicycle --- renamed Le Grand Rouge --- delivering medications and bringing sick people to the hospital.

Are there whole community initiatives?

One Plastic Bag  by Miranda Paul and Elizabeth Zunon tells how in Njau, Gambia one woman solves the problem of plastic bags littering the roads by recycling them.

 Zero Waste  by Allan Drummond highlights a community in Japan that has almost achieved zero waste. Kamikatsu, Japan, is known worldwide for its sanitation innovations. This small community of 1,700 people is leading the way in recycling and upcycling.

These books are a good start to a week of reading about recycling. Look here for more books you will find in the library.

Just for fun, read

Milk and Juice: a Recycling Romance  by Meredith Crandall Brown Once upon a time, in a refrigerator not too far away, a jug of milk and a bottle of juice fell in love. All was bliss until Juice was taken away from its one true love and . . . recycled.

13th - 19th November National Recycling Week

The preschool on the corner of the street I live in is very good at letting the community know what they are celebrating. The signboard is changed regularly to let you know what they think is important and children's work displayed. This week they tell us it is National Recycling Week.

This week aims to encourage Australians to better recycle. Planet Ark started the campaign in 1996. This year’s theme is ‘What Goes Around Comes Around’.

The focus is on giving resources a second life, consuming less, reducing the need for new resources, and of course, recycling!

The students at our school are very well informed when it comes to recycling and the library has a myriad of resources to assist with this. See here.

Two new books in the library that are just perfect for under eights  and which exemplify this year's theme are:

• Rubbish! Don't Throw It Away by Linda Newbery and Katie Rewse.

From pine cones on the grass to old coat- hangers in the cupboard, from empty cardboard boxes to unwanted curtains, used wrapping paper, yogurt pots, odd socks, sinks and fallen leaves What can we do with all this stuff that nobody wants?

The Dragonflies nursery know exactly what to do. They are full of creative ideas and love to think up ways in which old things can be made new and useful again. And it’s all free!

• Ruby's Repair Cafe  by Michelle Worthington and Zoe Bennett

Ruby loves to fix things, rather than throwing them away. When a shiny new department store opens next door to Ruby’s Repair Cafe, everyone in town soon forgets about fixing things. But will Ruby be able to save her family business from big business before the rubbish takes over the town?

8th May One Warm Coat Day

While thinking about jumpers, I also wondered about jackets and coats and whether they had days of their own. There is a day to celebrate leather jackets on 14th July. There appears to have been a National Coat Day on the 20th June, but why would Americans need to wear a coat in June? Then there's One Warm Coat Day on October 6th.  One Warm Coat Day is run by a not-for-profit charity in the United States that works to provide a free, warm coat to any person in need and to raise awareness of the vital need for warm coats.

One Warm Coat’s mission is to provide free coats to children and adults in need while promoting volunteerism and environmental sustainability. Thirty years ago, one woman with one coat sparked a movement that has led to over 43,000 coat drives across the United States, providing more than 7.3 million free, warm coats to children and adults while keeping more than 18 million pounds of textiles out of landfills. One Warm Coat believes in each person’s right to shelter from the elements and is committed to sharing warmth one coat at a time. 

This is a fantastic initiative. In many parts of Australia many of us only don a coat if we are going to Tasmania, Melbourne, the snow or the mountains or are off overseas, as it is rarely very cold.

Are coats common in children's books? 

• There are many beautiful editions of the bible story about Joseph and his coat of many colours. See:

Joseph's Coat of Many Colours by Katherine Sully

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice and Quentin Blake

Joseph by Anna Fienberg and Kim Gamble

The Coat of Many Colours by Pauline Baynes and Jenny Koralek

• A coat features in the fable about the wind and the sun. See

The Contest Between the Sun and the Wind by Heather Forest and Susan Gabor

The North Wind and the Sun by Brian Wildsmith

• A coat features in this Turkish folktale, The Hungry Coat by Demi. It features Nasrettin Hoca, a version of Nasreddin Hoca who was a philosopher, wise, witty man with a good sense of humour. His stories have been told almost everywhere in the world, spread among the tribes of Turkic World and into Persia, Arabia, Africa and along the Silk Road to the China and India cultures.

• Other fiction picture books which feature a coat.

Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Taback Simms

Blurb: When Joseph's coat got too old and shabby, he made it into a jacket. But what did he make it into after that? And after that?

The Goat's Coat  by Tom Percival and Christine Pym 

Blurb: When Alfonzo the goat discovers a host of creatures who need help, he doesn't hesitate. Using his precious, much-loved coat, he finds ways to solve their problems - fashioning a boat for frogs out of a cuff, for instance. But soon he's down to the last thread and it's started to snow... What will he do?

The Coat by Julie Hunt and Ron Brooks

Blurb: The Coat stood in a paddock at the end of a row of strawberries. It was buttoned up tight and stuffed full of straw and it was angry. 'What a waste of me!' it yelled. Then along came a man. 'I could do with a coat like that,' the man said. 

The Pocket Dogs by Margaret Wild and Stephen Michael King

Blurb: Mr Pockets' two small dogs, Biff and Buff, love to ride in his big coat pockets. But one day a hole appears in the right pocket and it gets bigger...

The Jacket by Sue-Ellen Pashley and Thea Baker

Blurb: about a much loved colourful coat that is passed from Amelia to Lily, to Lilly’s dolls, the cat with her kittens and finally breathed new life in to once more as the worlds most fabulous teddy bear for Lilly’s younger brother. 

A Coat of Cats by Jeri Kroll and Ann James

Blurb: When an old woman is moved to a "shiny new apartment," she is forced to leave her seven cats behind. But cats have long memories, as well as nine lives, and they miss her as much as she misses them. Late one night, the old woman braves freezing weather to check on her cats, and discovers that she means as much to them as they mean to her. 

The Tiny Woman's Coat by Joy Cowley and Giselle Clarkson

Blurb:The tiny woman makes a coat of leaves with the help of her animal friends. The trees, geese, porcupine, horse and plants all share something so the tiny woman can snip, snip, snip and stitch, stitch, stitch a coat to keep herself warm.

A Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton and Brooke Boynton Hughes

Blurb:  Using lyrics from her classic song "Coat of Many Colors," the book tells the story of a young girl in need of a warm winter coat. When her mother sews her a coat made of rags, the girl is mocked by classmates for being poor. But Parton's trademark positivity carries through to the end as the girl realizes that her coat was made with love "in every stitch." 

The Coat by Severine Vidal and Louis Thomas 

Blurb: Ah, the coat. So warm, so beautiful, so red. It's all Elise has really wanted, and she's been waiting forever. Lighthearted and poignant, this book offers a glimpse at the hardships confronting those who are experiencing homelessness and inspires us to treat them with compassion and respect.

The Bird Coat by  Inger Marie Kjolstadmyr and Oyvind Torseter

Blurb: The tailor Pierre has a big dream: He wants to fly. To make this outlandish vision a reality, he decides to sew a garment that is up to the task: his very own, resplendent bird coat. This tale was inspired by the true story of Franz Reichelt, dubbed "the flying tailor," who in 1912 jumped from the Eiffel Tower in an attempt at flight.

Beware the Killer Coat  by Susan Gates ( a short novel that is out of print but may be in a library) *

Blurb: Andrew hates his jumble-sale coat from the moment he first sets eyes on it. Big, red and shiny, with sharp, teeth-like zips and flaps that look like nasty green eyes, the coat clings to Andrew like an octopus. This is no ordinary coat, he is sure; it's a killer coat that wants to hurt him. The problem is that his mother won't take his worries seriously.

While making this list, I was surprised to see just how many of them are about recycled coats or the repurposing of coats, perfect for teaching about sustainability and over consumption.

3rd July International Plastic Bag Free Day

Today needs to be a  Plastic Bag Free Day! My local council has designated the whole of July as a plastic free time in order to make each of us contemplate what plastic bags do to our environment.International Plastic 

This most popular of disposable carrying devices that  we pick up from retailers are used for an incredibly short time, usually under 25 minutes, and are then disposed of. They may pass out of our thinking then, but they do not pass out of our world. Plastic bags remain in the world for anywhere from 100-500 years before finally decaying completely, and have a profound impact upon our environment as a result.

Out in the great reaches of the ocean are massive reefs made up of all sorts of plastic waste, and plastic bags play heavily among them. Such is the magnitude of the problem that these great floating islands reach hundreds of miles, like great monuments to mankind’s wastefulness, and disregard for the world upon which we live. International Plastic Bag Free Day gives us an opportunity to remind ourselves, and others, that every action we take, and every bag we dispose of, effects the lives of everyone in the world for generations to come.

I find that the children I teach are very aware of plastic in the oceans, but not so aware of its ramifications elsewhere such as in landfill. Luckily there are some wonderful picture books that can be used to start any discussion on what happens to plastic when it is not disposed of responsibly. 

See:
• One Plastic Bag  by Miranda Paul and Elizabeth Zunon tells the story of Isatou Ceesaya, a Gambian woman, 
 who came up with a way to recycle the plastic bags that had littered the landscape in her nation, an act that saved the environment and transformed her community.

• Bag in the Wind by Ted Kooser and Barry Root. This story follows a plastic bag on its  journey from a landfill into a series of townspeople's lives. One cold morning in early spring, a bulldozer pushes a pile of garbage around a landfill and uncovers an empty plastic bag a perfectly good bag, the colour of the skin of a yellow onion, with two holes for handles that someone has thrown away. Just then, a puff of wind lifts the rolling, flapping bag over a chain-link fence and into the lives of several townsfolk a can-collecting girl, a homeless man, a store owner not that all of them notice.

• Theo and the Giant Plastic Ball  by The United Nations Environment Program and Adrienne Kennaway tells of Theo and his quest to improve at football by making a ball out of discarded plastic bags. This then leads to clearing up his local environment and the realisation that by the community working together they could maintain a cleaner, more healthy environment.

• Plastic Ahoy! Investigating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by Patricia Newman and Anne Crawley tells of a team of scientists who explore the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where millions of pieces of plastic have gathered, having drifted there from rivers, beaches, and ocean traffic all over the world.

• The Adventures of a Plastic Bottle by Alison Inches and Pete Whitehead is the diary of a plastic bottle. It goes on a journey from the refinery plant, to the manufacturing line, to the store shelf, to a garbage can, and finally to a recycling plant where it emerges into its new life...as a fleece jacket! 

29th May Learn About Composting Day

I missed International Compost Awareness Week which ran from 7th to 13th May. This is a shame because their website has lots of good ideas to hook into. So instead I'm showing you books to advance the composting cause in preparation for the 29th May which is Learn About Composting Day. Did you know there were this many books specifically on composting? They make it so easy to be informed and to start a project that creates compost.