One Little Bag: An Amazing Journey

More like “one moralizing journey”. Our imminent eco collapse is not because we're not re-using a paper bag over multiple generations. Good God. WHERE IS THE GRETA THUNBERG BOARD BOOK?! Eco collapse is a systemic problem - it needs systemic solutions. Political solutions. Not bottom-up consumer guilt! I could recycle forever but if you're still shoving “GDP must grow -> profits must increase -> you must buy buy buy” down my throat, it doesn't matter if I have twenty recyclable bags or twenty “single use” plastic ones. In March 2020, everyone I knew suddenly stopped emitting CO2. Did we see a big bump in eco purity? I think not! Looks like me driving to work is not the main constraint on averting climate collapse!

So if you can't tell, this book rubbed me the wrong way. At least it answered my kid's questions regarding where paper comes from (“trees.”).

Picture books don't get any better than this. From its origins as a tree cut in a mill into paper, One Little Bag tells the story of a little paper bag. It's a bag that began its happy life as a lunch sack for a child's lunch, complete with a beautifully drawn red heart, and it goes on to serve many uses for its owners, with a steady accumulation of little red hearts, until it finishes off its life to contain a little tree set in the ground as a memorial to a grandfather. A lovely, lovely story with Henry Cole's classically beautiful illustrations.