Michael Recycle meets Litterbug Doug

Gr 1-4-When a "quaint little town" has a problem, the culprit is Litterbug Doug, a "lonely and lazy-boned thug" who's created a "mountain of waste." In rhyming verse, an unfortunate binary paradigm is presented: one is either neat, productive, and quaint or dirty and lazy. Doug is rescued from his ignorance by Michael Recycle. The end pages include random comments, such as the number of pounds of trash thrown out each day, per person, by Americans in 2007, the amount of trash recycled annually, and a hope that after 100 million tons of waste are recycled, "the president will give everyone a cheeseburger!" (There is no mention that the cheeseburger/fast food industry has created its own environmental problems.) The typical tips for creating less individual waste-turning off water, planting a tree, turning off the lights and electronics, using cloth napkins, not paper towels-are also given. Vibrantly colored, busy cartoonlike paintings are filled with stylized rats, garbage cans, and cats, and litter heaps recycle themselves from page to page. Our Class Is Going Green (Scholastic, 2008), Gail Gibbons's Recycle! (Little, Brown, 1992), and Paul Showers's Where Does the Garbage Go? (HarperCollins, 1994) are more informative.-Teresa Pfeifer, Alfred Zanetti Montessori Magnet School, Springfield, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.