Bhopal

School Library Journal

Gr 6 Up-Love Canal tells of the unsuspecting residents whose homes and school sat on top of a hazardous-waste site, giving background and context to the issue. It also identifies the major political, medical, scientific, and industrial players, as well as the mother-turned-activist, Lois Gibbs. A detailed chronology helps sort out the time frame, and the bibliography includes 30 Web sites for further study. Compared to Victoria Sherrow's Love Canal: Toxic Waste Tragedy (Enslow, 2001), this newer work is more comprehensive and is written at a higher reading level. Riddle discusses the disaster in Bhopal, India, in 1984, in which pesticide gas leaked from a Union Carbide plant, killing thousands of people and leaving thousands more with acute injuries and chronic illnesses. This incident alerted U.S. legislators to the need for better monitoring of and emergency planning for factories using hazardous materials. Perhaps the most interesting feature of this book is the many survivors' stories, told in their own words, which personalize the tragedy. There is one error: "carbaril" is identified as the chemical name for the pesticide Sevin; the correct spelling is carbaryl. With fairly dense text and black-and-white illustrations, these books will not pull in general readers, but they will give students ample information for reports.-Laurie von Mehren, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Parma, OH Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.