Here Comes the Garbage Barge! by Jonah Winter

The obvious moral, yelled loudly on the endpages with the book’s aforementioned tongue in its aforementioned cheek, “DON’T MAKE SO MUCH GARBAGE!!!” And the art from Chris Sickels, the creative force behind Red Nose Studio. ‘We’ve got enough of our own trash,’ he told his staff.

News of the wandering garbage had already reached him. “The mayor could see the Garbage Barge way off on the horizon. See, dey got dis ‘incinerator.” Brooklyn to the rescue. Finally, the good news, straight from Gino Stroffolino himself: “Here’s da deal: Brooklyn’s gonna take dat garbage and burn it. Even the Statue of Liberty, once Cap’m Duffy arrives back home, is holding her nose. He’s told to take the trash back to Long Island and stop along Texas (with its angry cowboys) and Florida (with its angry grandparents, even if they are floating in duck-shaped rubber tubes at the shore) along the way. Nobody wanted it.” Finally, the ever-patient Cap’m Duffy radios Mr. “Six weeks had passed since the Garbage Barge had set out, and the garbage was getting REALLY FUNKY. On March 22, 1987, the plucky tugboat, the Break of Dawn, led by Cap’m Duffy, begins its long journey south, only to be greeted with “oughly translated, that means “Fuhgeddaboudit!”) and so on. “You bring me dat garbage-I’ll take care of it,” the plan being that some poor farmers would be paid to take the trash and bury it. Stroffolino’s friend in North Carolina, Joey LaMotta, tells him everything is arranged. Gino Stroffolino, “this guy in the garbage business,” came up with the plan to have the barge carry the Long Island garbage down to North Carolina. “Enter the Garbage Barge!” As Kristi Jemtegaard points out in the Washington Post, this picture book is a bit of a hybrid: A cautionary tale and a fable (though the story’s based on real events from 1987), which “has its plasticized tongue planted firmly in its polymer cheek.” They had, to be precise about it, 3,168 tons of garbage and nowhere to put it. Landfills reaching up to the heavens with more and more garbage, garbage, GARBAGE! Did you know that the average American makes about four pounds of garbage every day?” Well, before everyone recycled, in the town of Islip, New York, the average person made seven pounds of garbage.

“Big, heaping, stinking mounds of garbage.

At the very least, I have two spreads from the book to show you today. And I really hope that I can chat with them at a later date. I’m rather ashamed to say I had the chance to interview both the author, Johah Winter (who wrote, amongst other great titles, this fabulous book), and Chris Sickels of Red Nose Studio, who created the art for the book, but I’ve had so much on my plate lately that I had to turn down that opportunity. Here Comes the Garbage Barge (Schwartz & Wade Books, February 2010) is one of the most striking picture books I’ve seen this year. “The Break of Dawn was a happy little tugboat.

Here Comes the Garbage Barge! by Jonah Winter