Review by Booklist Review
As a child whose mother taught him to reuse and recycle cast-offs, Nelson Molina enjoyed picking up discarded items, repairing them, and turning them into gifts for his siblings. As a man, he collected garbage in two ways. His job was to take garbage bags full of trash left by New York City residents and load them into a dump truck. But his mission was to discover treasures in the trash and take them back to the office, where he cleaned and saved the ones that seemed worth keeping. He displayed them atop his coworkers' lockers. When a supervisor ordered them removed, the unpopular decision was soon reversed. Eventually, 45,000 items collected by Molina formed the basis of the Treasures in the Trash Museum. With a foreword addressed to kids from Nelson Molina, the story begins with his childhood and concludes with "an invitation to think differently about the things we throw away." An unusual storybook written with a keen sense of what appeals to children and illustrated with a strong sense of form, line, color, and shadow, this beautiful picture book tells a story and makes certain points without becoming didactic. An excellent choice for classroom units focused on trash, conservation, or the environment.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"When I was a child, my mother taught me not to waste anything we could use again and to repair what could be saved. We didn't look at things and say, 'This is worthless,' " writes Nelson Molina in the foreword to this book about the museum he curated: Treasures in the Trash, which displays 45,000 items found in garbage collected in New York City's El Barrio neighborhood. In crisp, retro-style digital artwork that utilizes printmaking textures, Vidal (the Hello Genius series) portrays Molina as a boy making birdhouses with scraps of discarded wood, then repairing a tossed toy garbage truck and giving it to his delighted younger brother. Larsen (Jungle Cat) narrates in clear, documentary-style prose, following Molina into adulthood as he becomes a sanitation worker ("He rode around in a great big garbage truck, working on the streets where he used to play") and starts collecting and arranging the many curious, often valuable objects that people throw out, calling them each "a gift from the garbage." Eventually, as conveyed by this fresh look at consuming less and reusing creatively, the extraordinary collection grows up "to become a museum," one that invites visitors "to think differently about the things we throw away." Characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Back matter includes more ideas for reuse as well as photographs of Molina and his collection. Ages 4--8. Author's agent: Fiona Kenshole, Transatlantic Agency. Illustrator's agent: Simon Bollinger, Shannon and Assoc. (Sept.)
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Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 2--4--Nelson Molina grew up in East Harlem, New York City. He learned early on from his mother that nothing was worthless and that even things that seemed like trash had value if upcycled or repurposed. From his father he learned the pleasure of collecting and displaying treasures. As a sanitation worker, Molina discovered many unique items thrown away in the day. Treasure by treasure, he developed what has now become The Trash Museum, an unofficial collection of finds from the garbage housed in a Sanitation Department garage. The illustrations effectively capture the joy of discovery and the dignity of Molina's work and life's mission. Back matter encourages readers to employ the four R's (reduce, reuse, recycle, and rethink) when it comes to the resources they use and discard. VERDICT Informative and inspirational without veering into sentimentality, this title is useful across curricula and will have readers rethinking the value of items that appear seemingly worthless. Highly recommended.--John Scott
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A tribute to a New York City sanitation worker who salvaged a museum's worth of treasures from the trash. Though actual glimpses of the thousands of antique toys, old family portraits, and other evocative artifacts that Nelson Molina gathered over the course of his long career are limited to a paltry few photos at the end, his message that our castoff junk is rich in things that can be usefully recycled or upcycled comes through strongly in this brief biographical account. Following an appeal from Molina himself to search for the beauty and value in everything, even garbage, Larsen looks back to his subject's youth in East Harlem. The author links the pleasure that Molina took in building birdhouses from discarded bits of lumber and repairing a broken toy truck for his little brother to later years on the job--arranging reclaimed items first in a locker room and then expanding into larger quarters as the first few finds grew into thousands. Vidal's tidy, pleasant scenes of Molina hauling trash and sifting through garbage are implausibly clean and uncrowded. Still, suggestions for personal ways to "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rethink" at the end invite readers to carry on the good work. Molina writes that his parents were from Puerto Rico; figures in group scenes are racially diverse. Bags up a worthy takeaway about finding beauty in the most unlikely of places.(Picture-book biography. 6-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
