Reuse this book!

Review by Booklist Review

In the tradition of Hervé Tullet's Press Here (2011), readers are encouraged to interact with this book. Touch it, tilt it, give it a shake: in each two-page spread, direct instructions are given. Circle the globe with your finger, point to the flowers to guide a bee, blow like the wind, press down seeds. Among the brightly colored paper scraps recycled into collage illustrations, the bee is the connecting element, its path leading from picture to picture. Other earth-friendly ideas are introduced, such as gardening, composting, recycling, and reusing. At one point, the pictures turn sideways, inviting even more active engagement between book and reader, and all the concepts are reviewed in the end with a simple infographic. The final suggestion is a fitting example of sustainability in practice, with readers being invited to "flip back to the beginning and reuse this book." Effective image-to-text correlation makes this valuable to the youngest children, and the gamelike nature of the book's design adds even more appeal.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

PreS-Gr 1--A colorful picture book introduces very young children to the importance of protecting the environment through reusing and recycling. It opens by reviewing the life cycle of plants and pollination and then moves directly into showing how the things that we grow can be recycled by composting them into fertilizer for next year's garden. Next, the book shows readers how to recycle other items such as paper and glass to conserve natural resources, for example, cutting down trees to make paper. What makes the book fun for young readers (and demonstrates the idea of reuse) are the activities on each page that ask the children to blow on the flowers, circle the earth with their fingers or tilt the whole book to see how trees can grow. It ends with a brief review of why recycling is important and then reminds children that they can "reuse" the book by flipping it over and reading it again. Each page has bright, bold colors along with simple, cheery text. VERDICT Best for one-on-one sharing, this book offers a clever way to introduce the importance of recycling.--Anne Jung-Mathews, Plymouth State Univ., NH

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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