The bunnies at Minna’s school have been asked to create a poster about recycling. The best posters will be used as illustrations in the Community Recycling Calendar. Minna really wants to win, and her family has helpful suggestions. They recycle every day: Monday they take old clothes to the clothes bank; Tuesday they clean the yard and make compost; Wednesday they go to the recycling center. Every day they reuse, reduce, or recycle, but Minna doesn’t decide how to make her poster until the day before the contest. Winning posters for each month are announced, and just when she’s sure she hasn’t won, Minna gets her wish. Wallace’s (Pumpkin Day!, 2002, etc.) illustrations are her very recognizable cut-paper collages done here with found and recycled paper. The story is a vehicle for the Be Green message, but young readers won’t mind. Between the seven activities Minna and her family do during the week and the posters her 12 schoolmates display, each with a recycling suggestion of its own, there are plenty of ideas youngsters can act upon to be kinder to the Earth. There’s a fun recycling game (the game board is the penultimate page), a real recycling challenge for readers and their families, and, on the last page, swatches of the papers used in the illustrations with the invitation to find them in the pictures. There is more story here, but less information, than Gail Gibbons’s Recycle! (1992). However, the intended audience will enjoy the extras. An excellent introduction to this increasingly important subject. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7614-5149-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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