“No Time to Waste” is the second book in Carolyn Armstrong’s middle-grade series, “Eco Warriors.” In case you haven’t read the first book, 11-year-old twins Sydney and Sierra have a dream life. Their mother is a nature photographer, and they, together with their father, travel the world with her.
Their lives are full of adventure and a little bit of danger, especially for Sydney, the more impulsive of the twins. In this second book, Sydney and her family are in California, where her mom is photographing sea kelp beds and documenting the threats to them. Sydney, who developed the ability to communicate with animals in Book 1, is on the hunt for a keystone species animal who might tell her what her next task is.
Along the way, the twins learn about plastic pollution and its effects up and down the food chain. Armstrong does a great job educating readers about the problem, both its source (plastic that never disappears) and its scope (the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area twice the size of Texas, is one of five such patches throughout the oceans). Readers also learn about keystone species (in this book, the otters are one such species), nurdles (tiny pellets of plastic, which are the raw material everything plastic is made from — and a term I hadn’t heard) and some efforts to combat plastic pollution.
Identifying the problem is always the first step when looking for a solution, and this is where Armstrong’s whole series really shines. The author also does a .
