Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Make It!
by Jane Bull
Published in 2008 by Dorling Kindersley Ltd.
A Penguin Company
ISBN 978-1-4053-3161-6
64 pages 11” x 8.75” hardback
Age group 7-11yrs
Price: GBP 7.99
Stop! Think before you drop! Can you reuse your rubbish?
Make It! by Jane Bull is A Cleaner Greener Book, one of DK's new environmentally friendly produced books.
The book contains basic information about turning trash to treasure and the 3 R’s, teaches kids how to sort recyclable materials and also focuses on donating to charities.
Once that is over it then launches into numerous step by step instructions for making new things from our trash.
The paper of this book is FSC certified, thouogh having seen what the FSC is doing nowadays one can but wonder how much value we can put on their certification, the printer has reduced its carbon footprint by 52% since 1996 and generates all its own electricity, the inks are vegetable based and not petroleum based ones. The book has no dust jacket in order to reduce paper and energy consumption, and the company pays close attention to human rights, labor standards, the environment and anti-corruption. For more information, visit www.dk.com/madewithcare.
There is just one reuse suggestion in this book that I have rather serious problems with and that is the one about reusing plastic drinks bottles for water (and other drinks). Scientists have suggested reuse in that manner to be dangerous due too various chemical compounds, including Bisphenol A (BPA), leaching into drinks and hence the advice is not to reuse PET bottles.
Otherwise this is a brilliant book full of ideas for kids as to how to reuse waste and those ideas may, hopefully, lead the young readers (and who says it has to be only young readers) to take a different look at anything that is considered waste by people still presently.
I must say that I do love the Bob Bobble and think I have just found a use for the orphaned woolly hats I find around the parks frequently and which are too small for me to reuse. Methinks they will be turned into woolly friends. Great idea.
Despite the issue with the PET bottle reuse I will give this book a rating of 10 out of 10.
© 2009
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Make It! - Book Review
