SAVE THE EARTH!

by Betty Miles ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 25, 1974

Betty Miles takes a strip-mining approach to writing about ecology: ranging widely, exploiting the easily extracted surface material, and never digging deeply into anything. What's different here is the format: pages of black and white photos and straight text alternate with Alice Bay Laurel-like sketches decorating widely spaced, vacuous rhymes (""Here,/ there,/ everywhere/ noisy noise/ is in the air"") and project suggestions (catching auto exhaust on a sock or planning a new town on a given site). With its doodly watercolor outdoor scene on the cover it does look more inviting than the usual rundown, and the concluding ""How to Do It"" section covers (briefly) such big-time activities as writing to Washington, making a tape recording, writing a news story, starting a block association and holding a press conference. But we'd prefer a little hard analysis (whether chemical, botanical, political or whatever) along with the consciousness raising at this late date -- we wonder, for example, how the warning ""this may be true, or it may not,"" along with the announcement that ""many business organizations and industries"" send out ads and material about ecology, would help kids evaluate Exxon's recent eight-page snow job.

Pub Date: Feb. 25, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 96

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1974

Categories: NONFICTION