CSBR: Recycle

Carolyn LaMontagne
LIS 303A
Nonfiction Critique
November 16, 2003

Gibbons, Gail. Recycle! A Handbook for Kids. Little, Brown, and Company, 1992.

Few people today would say that recycling is wrong or a waste of time and energy. Most of us are aware, at least on some level, of the detrimental effects of both garbage and production on our environment. Yet we often throw our soda cans, plastic plates, and newspapers in the trash, not thinking about the harm we inflict on our surroundings and ourselves. Gail Gibbons, in Recycle! , attempts to inform kids about the value of recycling, giving clear instructions on how to gather and bundle materials, as well as statistical and scientific information about how and why recycling is useful.

Recycle! is a picture book (32 pages) with bright cartoon illustrations of the processes of recycling and manufacturing of materials. There are sections on paper, glass, plastic, cans, and polystyrene recycling. Each section begins with a description of how the material is manufactured and how long it takes to biodegrade, with emphasis on how the environment is harmed, and then concludes with a description, divided into clear steps, of how to recycle that material. Some of the pages contain one large picture, and other pages have a comic book style of several frames. In all of the pictures, the recyclers are happy, and while there does seem to be some attempt at diversity, the vast majority of the people in the illustrations are white. It is kind of comical to see a group of people collecting litter on the side of the road with huge grins on their faces.

Gibbons uses a wealth of facts and statistics to try to bring the idea home to children. For example, we learn that in the United States , we fill 100,000 garbage trucks each day with trash, some of which is recyclable. We learn that “[i]t takes 90 percent less energy to recycle an aluminum can than to make a new one,” and “it takes about 3,000 years for a glass bottle or jar to biodegrade.” These facts are useful, but one weakness of the book is that it does not cite any sources, either for the statistics or for the descriptions of the manufacturing processes. Another weakness is that these sorts of facts might not mean much to the young audience for whom the book is intended (ages 4 to 8 , according to the back cover). It would be nice if Gibbons used more references to things in a child's world or made the information more relevant to kids (for example, looking at what the world was like 3,000 years ago and saying, “if someone had thrown out a glass bottle then, it would still be around,” or something like, “you could make 100 aluminum cans in an hour using recycled materials, but only ten using new materials”). 1.

The stated age range for the book is 4 to 8, but I think that, based on the concepts and language of the book, it should probably be 5 or 6 to 8. Although the descriptions of the manufacturing and recycling processes are somewhat simplified, there is still a level of sophistication. For example, in the description of how glass is formed, the following sentence appears: “Measured amounts, sometimes dyed, are dropped into forming machines, where the liquid hardens to make bottles and jars.” Forming machines are not defined, and the illustration shows a row of bottles going down a conveyor belt. The sentence, along with many others in the book, seems a bit heavy for a four-year-old. A four-year-old might enjoy having the book read aloud, though, and looking at the illustrations, and some of the concepts will likely sink in. The idea behind the stated age range seems to be one of getting kids aware early on of the value of recycling, even if much of the text will go over their heads.

One odd thing about the book is that in dividing up the text into sections on specific materials, it also divides up the recycling process. In each section, we revisit the process of gathering materials, cleaning them, and bringing them to the recycling center. Not only is this redundant and potentially boring, but it also might appear (to the young reader) that recycling is much more involved than it really is. It isn't clear from the text that you can drop all of your materials off in one trip, or leave all of them on the curb if you have pick-up service. It might have been more useful to have just one section on the process of gathering materials, separating them, cleaning them, and then taking them to the recycling center (or putting them on the curb).

As an adult, I found Recycle! very informative and useful. I'm someone who tries to recycle, but sometimes I do throw out a bottle or can because our recycling pile is getting high and I'm too lazy to take it to the drop-off. Many of the facts in the book hit home for me, and I will now be less inclined to throw recyclable materials in the garbage. As far as the value for kids goes, I think the book is, on the whole, strong. Recycling is a pretty boring subject for kids to read about, I imagine, and the book does, with its colorful illustrations and relatively basic descriptions, make it more interesting than one might expect. There are certainly some things that I wish had been done differently, but this was the best book about the subject that I found. I looked at four other books, written on the same topic and for the same audience, and this one was the best in terms of its format, readability, and appeal.

1. These ideas are lame, but hopefully you get the idea.