Nice attempt but I'm 53 years old and trying to reduce plastics hasn't worked. We were reading similar material when I was in the 3rd grade. We need a new approach.

What a great book not only for kids but for adults as well! Plastic waste is everywhere. This is a great book for all ages

Join the No-plastic Challenge is an awesome book for children and adults. This is an informative children's book. It talks about a worldwide problem of plastic in our oceans. How it's killing the Marine life. The children in the book show ways to stop it.

Sophie has been working to reduce how much single-use plastic she and her family use during the last year, so when she spotted Join the No-Plastic Challenge by Scot Ritchie, she picked it up in the hope that it might offer them some new ideas.

In Join the No-Plastic Challenge, Nick and his friends are heading to a local island for a birthday picnic. After learning about plastic pollution, Nick challenges his friends to go the whole day without using any single-use plastics. The kids take their food in glass jars or wrapped in waxed paper, bring along their own water bottles and reusable bags, and Nick’s mom baked a cake herself instead of buying a plastic-wrapped one from a store.

On their trip, the children see garbage floating in the ocean, realize that the ferry’s snack bar has no recycling bin, and spot people using plastic cutlery to eat. Nick then teaches his friends about how plastic is manufactured, and about things they can do to minimize their plastic usage. At the end of the day, the kids all help to tidy up the beach before heading home.

This is a cute little primer that does a good job of introducing a lot of ideas about plastic waste, recycling, and minimizing our impact on the environment through the choice we make. It is far from perfect. No mention is made of the pollution coming from Nick’s mom’s car, for example, or the huge ferry they ride to the island instead of having a picnic closer to home, and Sophie was rather alarmed to see the kids using their reusable shopping bags to gather garbage off the beach, but for younger kids this is a good first step toward understanding how their actions can change the world around them for the better.

Thank you Kids Can Press and Netgalley for an ARC of this book.

Scot Ritchie does a great job explaining the damaging effects of single use plastic and offers us easy to implement alternatives for every day life. This book is informative, well illustrated and a fun way for children in the 4. - 8 year bracket to enjoy.

I love the theme of this boom and that it shows children all the alternatives to plastics that are damaging our environment and wildlife. It gets the message across without seeming judgmental. I can see it inspiring children to start their own No-Plastic Challenge!

Great book for a classroom or getting your own children involved with being eco-friendly! Artwork was cute, diverse and inclusive which i loved!

Can you imagine living a whole day without using single-use plastic? In my world, it's almost impossible! And yet, the children in the Join the No-Plastic Challenge prove to us that it's not an impossible mission! Being mindful of our actions and their impact on the environment is so important! We will talk a lot about this book in our home! After all, it contains the most shocking phrase I've read lately! "Every piece of plastic ever made is still around today!" It gets you thinking hard, right?
And this is just one book in what seems to be a great series of children's nonfiction! I can hardly wait to read other Exploring Our Community books!
Thank you to Net Galley and Kids Can Press for providing me with an e-book copy in exchange for my honest review!

This is a very approachable book about the environment. Many books like this tend to take a degrading tone but this uses kind language to describe how some plastics are still necessary and to be respectful when refusing single use plastic. I like how it also is put in the form of a story to make it engaging.

I absolutely <em>loved</em> the message in <em>Join the No-Plastic Challenge</em> by Scot Ritchie. It is never too early to teach children about sustainability and the importance of it, but it can sometimes be too late to teach people. Even I, to this day, struggle to make all the changes that I should in order to be more environmentally friendly in my daily life. It's always difficult to change when you have habits and crutches you've used your entire life.

In this book, Nick challenges himself and his friends to use absolutely no plastic for the entire day of his birthday. They don't use plastic bags, containers, or bottles for the whole day. Not only that, but this book also teaches facts about plastic throughout from the dangers of it for the environment to the health problems it can cause. I strongly believe that it is incredibly important to introduce children to these facts early on so that they can foster that knowledge as they grow and apply it to their lives.

I did find it a bit odd, though, that they were using reusable bags to gather all the trash on the beach. However, perhaps it's a bio-degradable bag that has the recycling symbol on it? And I suppose, in the end, like clothing it can all be washed. All in all, this is a great story with a great message that I approve 100%.

<em>I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</em>

Blog link review to go live on 08/27/19.

I wasn't sure what to think of this at first, but it is a great informational book to share with young children! The illustrations are fun, bold, and cartoon-like, and there is a story to go along with the facts. I also like that it gives realistic ways to stop using plastic, as well as ways to look closer to things around you. This book will be a great addition to any classroom or school library.

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. What an amazing book for kids to learn about recycling and cutting back on plastic. If we start them young, then they will grow to be green adults.

This is a very educational book for children, plus it gives them an eye view of plastics and how it effects our environment.

This book, in a very clever way, introduces kids about plastic pollution and how they can take action in reducing it. Additionally, they see how they can be an influence to other kids as well as adults. The pictures go a long way to reiterate what’s in print. Great lessons for all of us to learn!
I received a free book from NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving my review.

A really nice introduction for kids to reducing waste and the impact of plastic in the world. A nice look at what are possible alternatives.

I don't often request picture books from Netgalley, but this one caught my eye. It felt kind of serendipitous as my students and I have just finished a unit on sustainability at school and my class have been very invested in exploring ways to be sustainable.

In Join the No-Plastic Challenge, Nick is having a birthday and he's challenged himself and his friends to have a day where they don't use any kind of single-use plastic. The narrative is interspersed with facts to support the decisions the kids make and provide alternative ways of thinking about the way we consume products.

I love children's books that include both fictional and non-fictional aspects - it makes a text more accessible to a wider audience as those who prefer stories can still reap the benefits of a non-fiction text and vice versa. The narrative story is not overly complex - the concept is simple and easy to access, and is enhanced by the addition of simple, easy to implement sustainability changes.

The illustrations are fun and cartoon-like and feature detailed scenes where you can find the facts and alternatives. It's a great text to spend a bit of time unpacking the illustrations and the details hidden within.

Join the No-Plastic Challenge! is a fun, informative children's book that is very appropriate for this day and age, where being environmentally conscious is a very hot topic.

Even if I were not to like the execution of this book, it would be five stars. The moral of it all is simple, the idea behind presenting it – a birthday outing to the beach for five kids and a mother to drive them in a huge gas-guzzling MPV (whoops) – easily relatable. Every double-page spread has either a large image, or a comic-styled through-line, with one paragraph of explanation and a second that goes a little further to nudge our habits onto the right path. You might see the cover art and think that the kids are just collecting plastic rubbish, not 'reducing waste' as the subtitle has it. But this covers shopping ecologically, admitting plastics are kind of useful if you want spectacles, laptops etc, and trying your best to ease yourself and others into being single-use plastic free. So, like I say, five stars.

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.)

These books do so well for us and this new title is so timely. I love that these books aren’t to heavy on text but are the right balance of information and illustrations.