Book Review: Dawn Saves the Planet

A Fair Trade Book

(Go ahead and use that Amazon link, but be careful--it'll try to steer you to buy the Kindle rather than the book.)

Title: Dawn Saves the Planet (Baby-Sitters Club #57)

Author: Ann M. Martin

Author's web site: http://www.scholastic.com/annmartin/books/ (Just one of many pages at a professionally maintained web site for this prolific author.)

Date: 1992

Publisher: Apple / Scholastic

ISBN: 0-590-45658-7

Length: 146 pages

Quote: “How about if we do something like invite people to come to a fair?...We could call it the Green Fair.”

In this installment of the 100-plus adventures of the nicest middle school girls on Earth, Dawn takes her ecology project so seriously, she wants to set up a recycling center right inside her public school. She thinks of everything…except whether the people who participate in all her wonderful ideas want credit for thinking of things, too, especially when they did.

Dawn is a very, very nice girl but, given a chance to tell friends in Stoneybrook all the things she’s heard about and associated with being a California Girl during her earlier childhood in California, she can become just a bit of an overbearing bore. Of course, this being the Baby-Sitters Club world, the way Dawn alienates her friends will seem funny to readers. So will the way she overcompensates when she realizes what she’s doing.

And Dawn was a True Green—before Agenda 21—so, although her ideas for saving the planet may seem simpler and older-fashioned than the ones you’ve heard about more recently, they’re the ones that really are sustainable. Today’s kids can trust Dawn to recommend healthy individual Green choices!

This is a short book with a simple plot, and I’m glad this web site has no minimum word count for book reviews. Anyway, Dawn Saves the Planet is an essential part of every BSC collection, a fun read for middle school kids, family-friendly and wholesome. To buy it here, send $5 per book + $5 per package to either address at the bottom of the screen (that means eight BSC books for $45), and we'll send $1 per book to Martin or a charity of her choice.

All Gena Greene Storybook Dolls are unique, and I think we've dressed one for each of a good half of the Baby-Sitters Club and Baby-Sitter's Little Sister books. Not a problem. If you want a doll dressed in a different version of the outfit Dawn is wearing on the cover of either the first or the second edition, let me know; it'll raise the price to $20 and will not be shipped together with other books (because dolls don't qualify for the post office's book rate).