Recently my eight year old son and I have been reading more science-y type books. We read The Adventures of a Plastic Bottle: A Story About Recycling earlier this month and thought it was sort of neat.

The book is written in diary format from what initially is a blob of crude oil under the ocean floor. We follow it as it gets drilled up, put on a tanker, becomes a pile of plastic crumbs, and turned into a plastic bottle. But his story doesn't end there. Once the water inside him is drunk he becomes a vase for a flower, tossed in a recycling bin, sorted, shredded and then turned into something else. I won't give away the ending, but it's a pretty cool thing for a blob of crude oil to turn into.

This book is part of the Little Green Books series which is a "series of books [that] will get little ones excited about going green". It is recommended for children ages 4-6 but my 8 year old liked it too. There is a fair amount of humor in the book. As the bottle flies through the air in one scene he yells cowabunga. He washes himself with sponge (he has eyes and a face and arms in most scenes). I say he, but the story's main character could be a she too, since it's all written in the first person and it's not really gendered in the things it does.

The book is written by Alison Inches and illustrated by Pete Whitehead. The writing style is really engaging and the artwork is interesting. Mostly it's illustrated but occasionally there are photographs of objects put into the scenes.

One thing that is lacking is any sort of connection between recycling the plastic bottles and the benefit to the environment (or not buying bottled water at all). The book is printed on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper. There are ecofriendly words at the beginning of the book that are defined. Also a glossary at the end includes definitions for words like polymerization and sterilize. And the back cover has information about Keep America Beautiful (www.kab.org), but the story itself doesn't really tie in to any of these pro-environment concepts.

I liked the story but it was a little simple and missed the mark on recycling, and was more just about what things crude oil could turn into, which seems more pro-drill than pro-recycle to me. I am curious about the other books in the series though.

Recommended: Yes