What's It Like, Living Green? GIVEAWAY

Disclosure: I got this product as part of an advertorial. 

We received What's It Like Living Green?: Kids Teaching Kids, by the Way They Live, a book by Jill Ammon Vanderwood.  This 141 page paperback is an award winning book for children ages 9 and up.  It sells for $11.69, and is printed on 30% post consumer recycled paper.

This book covers various aspects of the 4 Rs:  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Responsibility.  There's a quiz to get you thinking about your family's consumption, and then ideas to motivate you to do better.

There are brief testimonials from a variety of people, telling about the green choices they're making.

If environmentalism were a religion, this would be a children's devotional book.  The sections are bite sized for frequent, yet brief reading.

Eli picked the book up, and was soon telling me about asbestos, impressed that it was stronger than steel, since steel is used to armor tanks.  I'm old enough to remember having asbestos in schools as a kid, so we talked about that.

The book was published in 2009, so some of the information is a little outdated, but much of it is timeless.  It mentions resources like Freecycle, and gives a lot of ideas for reusing things that might otherwise be tossed out.

As a parent with kids from China, I'm sensitive to how China is portrayed to my children.  Every country has it's imperfections, but I want my girls to be proud of their heritage, and I try to present China in a good, yet realistic, light.  For this reason, this will not be a book I have Hannah and Katie read when they get older.  Words like "inferior sanitation practices" and "without regard... for their workers" are bad enough, but a closing sentence on one section asks, "Do we really want to continue to purchase inferior products from an environmentally unaware country?"  As a matter of fact, yes, I do.  Oh, I'm all for buying local!  And that's great for produce, and whatever else we can purchase that way.  I talk to my kids about the idea of "stuff" having to travel to get to us, and how it's better to pick "stuff" with the shortest trip, so we're conserving energy in transport.  But I will continue to purchase traditional Chinese clothing and uniquely Chinese products.

You can win a copy of What's It Like, Living Green? by entering below.  US only, please.

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I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

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