green

Review: I Like Old Clothes by Mary Ann Hoberman

| Tasha

i like old clothes

I Like Old Clothes by Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrated by Patrice Barton

Celebrate reusing clothes along with this book’s radiant narrator.  She’s a little girl who simply loves old clothes, especially those that come from other people.  She wears them for dress-up, but also on just regular days.  She loves clothes with patches that used to be too-good for play and are now just right.  There are also some clothes that she changes a bit to make them her own.  It’s the faded, broken-in and comfortable clothes she loves.  Don’t you too?

Hoberman’s rhyming verse has a sweet playfulness to it that keeps the book from becoming heavy handed.  Instead it is about this girl and the reasons she loves to wear old clothes.  It’s persuasive and kindly done.  This book is perfect for children who wear hand-me-downs from relatives or siblings, but also for families who are buying used clothes to be more environmentally conscious. 

Barton’s illustrations are filled with soft colors and textures.  The entire book speaks to the ease and comfort of used fabrics.  On some pages there are buildings made from blue jeans, rules that run through the pages, and a general homage to reuse.

This book is as comfortable and cozy as my favorite old sweatshirt that I got from someone else when it didn’t fit them and I’ve had for 15 years.  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from copy received from Alfred A. Knopf.

Nibbles: A Green Tale

| Tasha

978076145791602

Nibbles: A Green Tale by Charlotte Middleton

The guinea pigs of Dandeville loved eating dandelion leaves.  Nibbles loved eating them even more than he loved playing soccer.  He ate them for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.  But then dandelion leaves started to run low.  Cabbage began replacing it on restaurant menus and dandelion leaves became a hot commodity on the Internet.  Eventually, there were no more dandelion leaves because they had all been eaten.  All but one dandelion that was growing outside of Nibbles’ window.  Even though Nibbles wanted badly to eat the leaves, he didn’t.  Instead he started to do research on dandelion and began to take very good care of his dandelion.  He waited patiently until it grew seeds and then headed to a tall hill where he blew the seeds into the air.  Soon the fields were filled with dandelions again, and Nibbles had found something besides eating dandelions that he loved.  Growing them!

This is a very appealing book that takes the lesson of renewable resources to a level that even small children can understand.  Middleton’s brilliant choice was to use dandelion greens as the scarce resource, because we all have dandelions taking over our lawns and gardens.  In this way she made something that we see as a nuisance into a commodity.   Middleton’s mixed media art is friendly, filled with round-bellied guinea pigs and plenty of green.  The hair tufts and whiskers done in real fuzz and string make the illustrations engaging and interesting. 

A great choice when talking with preschoolers about going green or gardening, this book will be a welcome addition to units and story times.  Appropriate for ages 3-5.

Reviewed from copy received from Marshall Cavendish.

My Forever Dress

| Tasha

My Forever Dress by Harriet Ziefert, illustrated by Liz Murphy.

A little girl has a grandmother who is very good at sewing.  Each year, the grandmother makes her a special dress.  The little girl gets to pick the fabric and help in other ways like pressing the pedal on the sewing machine.  The next year, the grandmother and the little girl discuss being more eco-friendly.  So they reuse the dress and add pink leggings to make it more of a smock.  The year after that, the dress is too small to wear any more, so they take it apart and reuse the material.  Adding a knitted cardigan, the dress is once again reinvented.  In the end, there is just no way for her to keep on using the dress, so she gives it to her younger cousin and start again with a new outfit.

This is a great tangible way for children to see greener living at work.  There is no drumming of the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra though it is obviously the theme of the book.  Ziefert never lapses into didacticism, rather letting the story itself make the point. The excitement of the story is seeing each reinvention of the dress as the years pass.  Illustrator Murphy has used collage to great effect here, creating great patterns for the dress, but also throughout the story as wallpaper, tablecloths, and backgrounds.  She has an eye for colors and patterns that really shows here.

A very nice green choice for story times.  For any child who enjoys clothes and fabrics, this is a treat of a book as well.  Appropriate for ages 4-7.

Reviewed from library copy.