Garbage may be often envisioned as part of some greater ecological or environmental concern, but how children"s books deal with our garbage is a representational question. How can the children"s books turn issues of trash and waste into stories dramaticenough to engage young readers, stories powerful enough to establish cognitive distance from everyday experience so that the readers may adopt a critical view of them? The essay premises that the children"s books on garbage mobilize a host of values in both children"s literature and environmentalism, and that these books are also symptomatic examples that affect the way garbage is represented and understood for children. It first explores the common ways in which garbage is presented in children"s books, and then discusses two recent examples-Here Comes the Garbage Barge (2010), written by Jonah Winter and illustrated by Chris Sickels, and I"m Not a Plastic Bag (2012) by Rachel Hope Allison-that examine garbage problems while minimizing didactic proselytizing that a conventional approach might foster. While the two books are a combination of fiction and non-fiction, similar in the depiction of human waste, they are very different in terms of content and style. The essay will read the two books alon&g with Mary Douglas"s theory of dirt as "matter out of place," and Julia Kristeva"s concept of the abject, exploring the extent to which the garbage problems are imaginatively and strategically addressed in Winter"s and Allison"s books. It argues tha&t the two children"s books demonstrate an ecological approach which not merely uses humor or hyperbole to get their message across, but also encourages alternative ways of seeing the waste we have made. The essay suggests that it is pedagogically sig&nificant to offer different eco-critical perspectives or be more socially conscious about garbage as part of environmental concern in children"s books.
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