Where Does the Garbage Go?: Revised Edition (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2) - Softcover

Paul Showers wrote twenty books for the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series, including favorites such as What Happens to a Hamburger? and Where Does the Garbage Go? Mr. Showers worked on the Detroit Free Press, the New York Herald Tribune, and for thirty years, the Sunday New York Times.

Grade 1-4-An update of the 1974 title (HarperCollins), not only in content but also in terminology. In the original, the narrator's grandfather buried their trash on his farm and fed garbage to the hogs. "Garbage and trash" were taken together to the dump, or, in the case of big cities, incinerated, resulting in air pollution. Separating trash for recycling was only a hopeful prospect. Gone is the family farm in the 1994 edition. Children learn in school about how things "used to be." They take a field trip to a landfill where garbage and trash (brought in from a nearby big city) are still being buried, but they refer to recycling as a commonplace activity in which the whole town participates. A pie chart breaks down the composition of a landfill by percentages. Showers mentions toxic ash and smoke generated from incinerators and the basic problem of too much trash. The pictures are also more sophisticated in content, if not style. How a landfill is built and how an incinerator works are more fully portrayed than in the previous edition, and more detailed drawings are used to show the processes involved in paper, glass, and plastic recycling. Suggestions for what individuals can do to help the environment are appended. Touches of humor are added via dialogue balloons, making this title an enjoyable and useful introduction to the subject.
Judith V. Lechner, Auburn University, AL
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.