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Bag in the Wind book cover
Bag in the Wind
2010
First Published
3.69
Average Rating
48
Number of Pages

In a singular first children’s book, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Ted Kooser follows a plastic bag on its capricious journey from a landfill into a series of townspeople’s lives. One cold morning in early spring, a bulldozer pushes a pile of garbage around a landfill and uncovers an empty plastic bag—a perfectly good bag, the color of the skin of a yellow onion, with two holes for handles—that someone has thrown away. Just then, a puff of wind lifts the rolling, flapping bag over a chain-link fence and into the lives of several townsfolk—a can-collecting girl, a homeless man, a store owner—not that all of them notice. Renowned poet Ted Kooser fashions an understated yet compassionate world full of happenstance and connection, neglect and care, all perfectly expressed in Barry Root’s tender illustrations. True to the book’s earth-friendly spirit, it is printed on paper containing 100 percent recycled post-consumer waste and includes an author’s note on recycling plastic bags.

Avg Rating
3.69
Number of Ratings
270
5 STARS
23%
4 STARS
36%
3 STARS
30%
2 STARS
9%
1 STARS
2%
goodreads

Author

Ted Kooser
Ted Kooser
Author · 24 books
Ted Kooser lives in rural Nebraska with his wife, Kathleen, and three dogs. He is one of America's most noted poets, having served two terms as U. S. Poet Laureate and, during the second term, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection, Delights & Shadows. He is a retired life insurance executive who now teaches part-time at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. The school board in Lincoln, Nebraska, recently opened Ted Kooser Elementary School, which Ted says is his greatest honor, among many awards and distinctions. He has published twelve collections of poetry and three nonfiction books. Two of the latter are books on writing, The Poetry Home Repair Manual and Writing Brave and Free, and a memoir, Lights on a Ground of Darkness (all from University of Nebraska Press. Bag in the Wind from Candlewick is his first children's book, with which he is delighted. "It's wonderful," Ted said, "to be writing for young people. I am reinventing myself at age 70."
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