Colonel Trash Truck

I recently received a copy of this book from its publisher to review on Everead. So here goes.

I am not a five-year-old boy. So it wasn't my favorite. But if you are a five-year-old boy, you just might like this book.

Colonel Trash Truck is a save-the-day garbage-crushing hero who's helping to clean the world, one piece of trash at a time. The book is meant to inspire kids to "think green" and not litter.

However.

The book is written in rhyme, which occasionally feels forced, particularly the page about cleaning up your "boogies" and "loogies" and not picking your nose. I had a hard time seeing the connection between nose-picking and garbage trucks---technically, using a tissue actually creates more trash, right?

For me, the book mostly missed the mark---lots of very similar illustrations of Col. Trash Truck driving here and there down the street picking up garbage, and sometimes trite rhyming schemes that also weren't entirely accurate. (It often seems to imply that garbage trucks go around cleaning up all garbage, not just the stuff in the cans that you leave on the curb. Could this actually send kids the wrong message? That littering is naughty, but it's really okay, because garbage trucks will "even come pick up the scum left by your little brother"?)

In any case, if you've got a young kid, likely male, who really likes garbage trucks and likes to think about the environment, this could be a fun book for him. That's my take.