Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Pollution and Waste: Environmental Facts and Experiments
Nonfiction
8 to 10
Kingfisher, 2002 ISBN: 978-0753455050
These days there is a lot of talk about pollution and how we are damaging the environment by creating too much waste. Unless you actually see signs of the damage being done, it is very hard to get a real sense of what these dangers mean to our health and the health of our planet.
In this book, the authors help children to understand what pollution, in its many forms, is. Every double page spread looks at one topic related to pollution or pollution prevention. In addition to the text and annotated artwork, every topic has an experiment that young readers can try, which will help them to understand the concept being discussed. The experiments are easy to do, and the supplies needed to do them are easy to find around the house.
To compliment the text and the experiments, many of the spreads have an “Eye-spy” box. These boxes contain information about how the reader can see pertinent things in their world that are related to pollution in some way. For example, on the Dirty Air spread, the Eye-Spy box contains information about how lichens are indicator species. If you see “thick, hairy lichens” near your house, then the air is clean. If you see “flat” lichens, then the air is dirty.
Topics covered in the book include, “What is pollution?” “Cleaning up our act,” “Polluting our water,” and “Too much noise.”
This is one of the titles in the excellent Young Discoverers series.
