The dumpster diver

Janet S. Wong

Book - 2007

Once a month--every week in the summer--Steve the electrician dons special gear and, with the help of youngsters who live in his building, dives into a dumpster seeking useful objects that they can transform into imaginative new ones.

Saved in:

Children's Room Show me where

jE/Wong
0 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
Children's Room jE/Wong Due Apr 13, 2024
Subjects
Genres
Picture books
Published
Cambridge, Mass. : Candlewick Press c2007.
Language
English
Main Author
Janet S. Wong (-)
Other Authors
David Roberts, 1970- (illustrator)
Edition
1st ed
Physical Description
unpaged : ill. ; 30 cm
ISBN
9780763623807
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Riffling through rubbish isn't an activity that most grown-ups wish to encourage. But seasoned writer Wong cleverly spins the topic for children, leaving the actual diving to a grown-up who is clearly known to everyone in the featured apartment complex: Our neighbor Steve the Electrician dives for buried treasure right smack here in our backstreet alley. The book's African American narrator describes how Steve enlists a Diving Team of children to dream up wild ways to reuse his finds, such as a blender lava lamp or a zany contraption held together by thirty-two screws and a roll of duct tape. Essential to the book's charm are Wong's dry humor (rule number one of garbage immersion: KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT ) and Roberts' screwball watercolors, which capture the whimsy of the creations, the gross-out fun (cockroaches abound), and the breathless energy of all involved. The topsy-turvy artwork keeps things light, but adults will find plenty to talk about with children, from the value of creative conservation to safe modeling of the depicted activities (which include gathering junk from apartment tenants who may or may not be strangers). This will be popular anytime, but especially around Earth Day, when it will inject new possibility into enjoyment to reduce and recycle. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2007 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This title gives new meaning to the term "buried treasure," as it explores the fun behind unearthing trash from the depths of a dumpster and recycling it into new life forms. The design mirrors the theme, with snippets of text designed to look like newspaper clippings. And while the title may suggest that the story centers on one character, Steve (an electrician who suits up for the scavenger hunt), his findings are actually the result of a team effort-a young group of Steve's fellow apartment building-dwellers. Not only does the crew lend a helping hand, they also pool their imaginations to transform the discoveries into creations with newfound purposes: "Yesterday's treasure of the day was an old computer that almost became a flowerpot (Johnny's idea) or a fish tank (Lina's idea) or a sculpture (my brilliant idea)." Readers will be pleasantly surprised that the diving team's efforts are oftentimes generous, whether they are inventing new means by which a neighbor may practice her typing skills or assembling a wheelchair to assist chief diver Steve after he takes a fall. Roberts paints a picture of an active urban landscape bursting with the many goings-on of this bustling group. The result is a short story that is long on innovation and imagination. Ages 5-8. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review

PreS-Gr 2-This urban trash-to-treasure tale will resonate with city dwellers and send suburbanites and kids in rural areas searching for similar adventures. A boy waits at his bedroom window for his adult neighbor Steve, a.k.a. "the dumpster diver," to set things in motion. Five taps come on the boy's window and two other young residents of the building also receive the signal to report to duty. The children are "Hose Handler #1," "Hose Handler #2," and "The Fauceteer." Armies of insects are dislodged when Steve dives into the back-alley Dumpster and hauls out seemingly worthless junk, but worth is in the eyes of the beholder, and the three assistants share his reverence for discarded objects. Broken skis, blenders, and lamps can all be reincarnated, and half the fun is finding a tenant who will appreciate some newly fashioned object. Steve's enthusiasm and creativity are so infectious that neither he nor his helpers are deterred by the building grouch, who thinks that the man should get a real job. The text aptly appears on torn scraps of paper or, in the case of the final words, a Band-Aid that Steve will need, having incurred a "work related" injury and convalescing in a homemade wheelchair! With his unmatched gloves and flippers, goggles, and hooded yellow slicker, Steve is a lovable comic figure. Roberts portrays him with a playful elasticity that perfectly matches Wong's playful story.-Gloria Koster, West School, New Canaan, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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

(Primary) Take a multicultural trio of city kids out of Ezra Jack Keats; add the graphic wit and light edge of early Tomi Ungerer; and animate, animate, animate. The dumpster diver is electrician Steve, a free spirit who recruits the young narrator and his pals to hose down the treasure he extracts and hose off the beetles and roaches and spiders that emerge en masse -- ""millions of legs living two hundred feet away from me."" What the kids make of Steve's findings is up to them: out of ""a pair of busted skis,"" a pair of roller skates, and a ripped parasol -- ""a paraskater."" Then, disaster: the dumpster trash collapses under Steve and he's badly hurt; his cranky, obstreperous neighbor gloats; and the kids resolve to collect useful junk door-to-door instead of digging through the dumpster. ""Except, maybe, for this old wagon...and that broken rocker...all the stuff we need...for a wheelchair for Steve!"" Strips of text on found-paper backgrounds are pasted across the pages, form mimicking content; similarly, beetles and roaches and spiders swarm over the endpapers. For Roberts (illustrator of Philip Ardagh's Eddie Dickens trilogy), Wong's deft, economical script is only the beginning of the story. Felicitously paired, they've made a snappy, inventive book with heart. Copryight 2007 of The Horn Book, Inc. All rights reserved. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Sandwiched between wonderfully gross-out endpapers, this distinctly urban tale introduces a wild-haired handyman named Steve who furnishes his apartment with recycled junk. And how does he procure his materials? By dressing in (discarded, of course) diving gear and plunging full body into his neighborhood's dumpsters--assisted by a corps of eager young neighbors who hose the diver and his loot down while offering such commentary as, "Diving Rule number one is: Keep your mouth shut. (This is especially important when the roaches start flying!)." Having helped Steve turn an old blender into a lava lamp, revive a dead computer, create new vehicles from broken skis and skateboards and other ingenious feats of reclamation, his crew leaps into the breach when he himself is laid up by a dumpster accident--going door to door to collect just the right detritus to construct a wheeled chair. Illustrated in cleanly drawn cartoon jumbles strewn with smiling faces and broken junk of all description, this cheery episode will have young readers (those, at least, without an aversion to creepy-crawlies) thoughtfully examining the castoffs in their own neighborhoods. (Picture book. 6-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.