Many are those who view the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with alarm. Rachel Hope Allison, '00, views it with a certain tenderness, too. In I'm Not a Plastic Bag (Archaia and JeffCorwinConnect, $19.95), Allison creates a graphic novel about the tons of human litter that threaten marine life where the currents of the North Pacific gyre have swirled up a vast "island" of particulate pollution.
Starting with a wind-tossed plastic grocery sack, Allison collates a cast of human discards into a lonely ocean dweller. But the massive body (with its iceberg depth and cheerful topography) doesn't recognize that its playful overtures to a giant squid or an albatross can kill them. Readers wooed by the charming artwork of Allison's textless fable can learn more about the real environmental threat in the book's foreword by Ocean Mysteries host Jeff Corwin and in eight pages of educational material.
