Beetles for Breakfast

The title tells readers the gist of the information here: insects are eaten and enjoyed by many nations in the world, and we are close to using them in many more countries, as long as they can be suitably disguised. Dog food is likely to include crushed larvae sooner than food for humans, but we’re getting there. This book goes on to describe the many possibilities for using plants, and fungi and mosses seem to have huge potential. Young readers will surely appreciate the many possible uses of poo, when suitably treated, e.g. as a fertilizer, or dog poo could fuel streetlights!  Our health could be monitored in many other ways, e.g. analyzing our breath, and the mucus of a certain slug could be used as a natural form of healing instead of plasters. Inventors are working on removing plastic from the oceans, and on building houses with bottles made of bricks – we can already buy jackets made of recycled plastic. It’s all fascinating, and of course there is plenty of encouragement, as well as a double page spread at the end, on what we can all be doing now, like using less plastic in the home and buying biodegradable products; wasting less: upcycling, clothes swapping – there are lots of good ideas.

The Contents include food, the home and particularly the bathroom, and innovations coming for various settings e.g. farming, the park, at school, on the beach, and Future Thinking, which speculates on transport. The layout is very approachable: each chapter has a line across the bottom detailing what’s coming, so that the reader can turn to any particularly interesting topic, or continue to browse as each is covered in more depth, and it’s all in boxes, with lots of very colourful illustrations. The paper is, of course, FSC certified. Madeleine Finlay is a writer, journalist and presenter specializing in science, and this is her first book, but it is certainly going to be useful, and Korean illustrator Jisu Choi packs her pictures with detail. This will be fun to browse through, and there is a well-constructed Glossary and Index for those young readers with particular interests. Definitely recommended.