I have completist tendencies, and since I enjoyed Bethany Barton’s earlier books (I started my exploration of the series with I’m Trying to Love Farts), I decided to pick up more books in the series.
I’m Trying to Love Garbage (2021) works well with the earlier fart book: there are lots of easy reasons why people would not love garbage. As the fart book had paired a narrator with a fart-joking little brother, this book teams the narrator up with a bunch of “garbage collectors”: natural creatures (or fungi) that are involved in processing natural garbage like sticks. The book introduces a cluster of useful terms related to ecosystems, like apex predators, primary, secondary, and tertiary consumers. Most terms are pretty clear in context, and some newer terms, like detritivore, get a full page of explanation. There’s some fun back and forth with these creatures, which makes the presentation of inorganic garbage and the way it hangs around so long.
I’m Trying to Love Rocks (2020) faces more of a challenge, actually, because kids like rocks. They carry rocks in their pockets. They collect them, have favorite rocks, and so on. Barton tries to engage readers by pointing out how “boring” rocks are, but to be honest, it feels forced. The same is true for the narrator and co-narrator: I’m not quite sure who the geology fan is, or where she comes from.
That being said, this was a fun sprint through geology, and a useful introduction to ideas, terms, explanations, and examples. Readers literally go from popcorn to pumice, and from the Grand Canyon to dinosaurs.
