Supporters outside of the Gambia can host a school visit or virtual Q&A with Miranda and Isatou to help us raise funds for books, transportation, and programming for Gambian youth! Learn more here. A young woman, Isatou discovers that plastic bags are being used more and more in her village- and being tossed aside, littering the ground.

This two-per-sheet graphic has cut and fold dotted lines so that students can print, cut, and fold to make their very own One Plastic Bag bookmark! In the USA you can bring an emotional support animal (ESA) on a flight with you. An ESA is a companion animal that a medical professional says provides some benefit for a person with a mental health condition, they are usually cats or dogs, but can be other animals…The following table outlines what medicines and medical equipment you can take in your hand and/or hold luggage. Luggage restrictions on medication Item One Plastic Bag is the story of how one woman cleans up her community, inspiring friends and neighbors to help create plastic, recycled purses, and reduce the trash in her village. One Plastic Bag wins Eureka! Honor Award for nonfiction from the California State Reading Association. Read more here.

Mongabay Kids: What was the plastic bag pollution problem like in your community before you had the idea to recycle the bags into products like purses? Wonderfully inspiring! The Author's Note provides more details and there is also a Wolof Glossary and Pronunciation Guide, a Timeline and Suggestions for Further Reading. The illustrations deftly incorporate plastic bags. Highly recommended!!! One Plastic Bag would be a great resource as a springboard for Earth Day activities or a school wide venture into a community action project. Other smaller scale activities include: At first, though, the plastic bags are wonderful. People carry things easily with them, children poke holes and drink water from them. Isatou thinks the colors are so beautiful. But, everyone simply discards the plastic on the ground and soon it becomes a problem.

“Two hours will be long enough, won’t it?”

NEW! During the COVID-19 outbreak and school closures, many publishers are allowing educators to read picture books to their students in closed-link recordings. If you want to read One Plastic Bag on a video for your students, fill out this online form from Lerner Publishing to request permissions. Author Miranda Paul and illustrator Elizabeth Zunon tell the story of Isatou Ceesay in this poignant and inspiring picture-book biography, chronicling how the Gambian woman came up with a solution to the mounds of plastic trash strangling her small village. Although she had noticed the growing problem of plastic waste while walking through the village, it was the death of one of her grandmother's goats - strangled by the plastic bag it had eaten - that inspired Ceesay to begin working on the problem. Collecting the bags, she came up with a way to rework plastic into thread, which she and a group of women used to weave purses. This recycling effort was initially met with ridicule, but eventually it proved successful, not just as a means of using old plastic bags, but as a source of income for the women. Many good things would eventually come of this project...

It is rare to find a children’s book with such an important message about our environment, that is set outside the US, and is illustrated so beautifully! One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and The Recycling Women of The Gambia is the inspirational, true story about littered plastic bags and the woman who stood up and transformed her community. It is the perfect book to introduce environmental topics to kids like recycling, and also teaches that even one person can make a difference. The story begins on a walk in Njau, Gambia. Classroom: This story gives teachers the perfect opportunity to incorporate science into literature. In the 3rd grade standards particularly, students begin learning about recycling and being responsible environmentalists within society. I would first read this book to students and then go into a short lesson about recycling and reusable materials. With this knowledge given to students, I will ask them ways to eliminate plastics in their own life. Students will then create an “Environmentalist Stanly” (I hope you are familiar with flat Stanley). They will create their environmentalists and then be asked to take pictures of the doll with the ways in which they will reduce plastic usages. This will create a fun activity that students can do both at school and at home if they so wish. Students will be given time in class to complete these projects and parents will be notified as well about their project. At the end of the project, I hope to have another conversation with students on how to reduce plastics and the things they realized about themselves participating in the activity. In One Plastic Bag, Isatou Ceesay turns old plastic bags into new purses. You can turn old bags into something new, too! Follow these steps to make a jump rope. Linked to Common Core Learning Outcomes! As the years pass, is no longer beautiful, the ugliness of the plastic bag is everywhere. People try to burn it but the smell is terrible. Mosquitoes breed in the water that pools in the plastic and disease spreads. Goats eat the pastic and it strangles their insides and they die. Isatou feels she can no longer ignore the situation. And she has the idea to gather a group of women to gather and clean the plastic bags and then to make thread of the plastic bags and crochet it into purses. When she passes by the pile of rubbish, she smiles because it is smaller now. She tells herself, one day it will be gone and my home will be beautiful.

Students could make Before and After posters of the plastic bag situation in Isatou's village. Alternatively they could research their own recycling issue and create a Before and After campaign complete with radio, tv and print advertisements. I would use this book as an introduction to a recycling unit and/or ways to help the environment. Students may not realize the impact plastic bags have on communities, so this book could help them make sense of that. This book could also be used when talking about the dangers of pollution and animals; students may not realize that animals are affected by people polluting. Since this book is set in Gambia, a country in West Africa, it help students see that pollution is everywhere and not just in the United States. Knowing this, it would be a great opportunity for students to compare and contrast pollution from Africa and the United States. Students can also understand a bit more about the culture of Gambia, since the book features many new vocabulary words from Gambia. After a unit, students can create their own solutions to pollution, like Isatou did with the plastic bags.

CREATORS: The co-creators of this unique event are Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom and Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book/Audrey Press. Learn more about these phenomenal ladies here. MISSION: To raise awareness for children’s books that celebrate diversity, and to get more of these books into classrooms and libraries. large electrical items such as laptops or tablets can be taken into the cabin, but must be removed from hand luggage at the search area and placed in the trayStudents could explore the country of West Africa or the city of Gambia and learn more about its culture, its people, etc. One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia is an excellent biography about the events that were happening in Gambia and the impact made my Isatou Ceesay and the other Women of Gambia. Plastic has been creating a negative impact on the worlds environment. The story of Gambia is a real account of this issue. In a small country, where the people would drop their plastic bags on the ground and would just continue on with their day. Isatou was tired of seeing the negative impacts on her country, and was determined to find a solution. This is a great topic to bring in the social studies unit, the idea of how people can have positive and negative effects on the environment. It is also a chance for students to look at how one person made such an impact. This could be an opportunity for teachers to encourage students to find a problem in their school and create and action plan to create a solution. This is a moving real story about how one persons idea and motivation can be turned into a movement, and can make a huge impact on the country. This story can also be included into the math unit. Teachers can create story problems out of story of the recycled purses Isatou and the Women made. Students can think about the profit the Women made how they used the money. This book can be used in many ways in a 3rd grade classroom and can be connected to many different subjects. This book was a WOW book for me because the environment is something that I worry about and this book is encouraging to think that one person can create a huge movement for a country. I hope students would find the same encouragement in the book and would push them to be change in their own school. This presentation features slides with bulleted information about climate, school, food, language, and aspects of everyday Gambian life. Also includes photos and additional links.