Green Machine

January 1, 2020
An introduction to the innovative (and smelly) processes that turn municipal food waste into electrical energy. Donnelly follows the journey of food scraps from kitchen through composting bin and collection truck to a municipal digester, where the waste undergoes both human-engineered and microbe-assisted transformations. The author subjects her text to syllabic verse in rhymed triplets, a choice that places meter above clarity. Describing the digester, she writes: "A place where the waste / isn't wasted: a tank / with the power to power our town, / where trash becomes gas, / and good riddance--that stank! / That's the power of food breaking down." Jacques' illustrations adopt a retro, mid-20th-century look. Cutaways reveal the simplified inner works of the digester tank and electrical generator. Diverse workers are depicted in rather static poses; the featured family members have dark hair, varied brown skin tones, and minimally rendered, dot-and-comma facial features. "Tiny" microbes appear as large, colorful critters with googly eyes and smiles; there's no indication that in reality they're invisible to human eyes. A double-page summary ("Follow the Food Energy!") reuses illustrations from previous pages to illustrate the food-to-electricity process. Within two concluding pages of facts, fossil fuels are characterized as "nonrenewable," without mention of their dominant role in the climate crisis. Constrained verse distracts from timely, basic information about transforming food into fuel. (further reading) (Informational picture book. 4-7)

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 9, 2020
Confusing text choices weaken this rhyming introduction to green energy, which follows food “from the farm to the town, to the market, the kitchen, the plate,” into the compost pile, and off to the processing plant. In Jacques’s retro-mod cartoon illustrations, a green truck (“Call it Peels on Wheels or a truck full of yuck”) collects materials from green recycling bins, taking them to a large stinky tank “where trash becomes gas” and large, goggle-eyed microbes peer out from their “slow, murky work.” Unfortunately, the text zips by complex ideas, such as anaerobic digestion and biogas, without initial explanation, and the lines seem to favor cadence over clarity (“It’s airtight in there, no O2 for these bugs,/ tiny microbes that eat food plus poop”), which may prove perplexing to readers not already in the know. An illustrated diagram at the end clarifies the process, and endnotes make the case for green energy and belatedly explain anaerobic digestion. Ages 4–8.