Wednesday, February 6, 2013

The White BicycleThe White Bicycle by Rob Lewis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I ordered this book from the library, thinking that I was getting the book by Brenna that just got a Newbery Honor. It is a short read, so I read it anyway. The illustrations for the book are quite nice, but the premise is a bit worrisome to me. The boy and his dad take his old rusty bike to the dump, where it is found and used by a succession of other people. Each person on the way uses the bike and then somehow loses it. The next person finds it and takes it for his/her own use. It is this last part that is problematic. It is never even hinted at along the way that it might not be right to simply take the bicycle, just because it is there and no one seems to be using it. I can see taking it from the dump, but after that, no one tries to find the owner - they just take it and use, then lose it. In the end, a bicycle repair person finds the bike, cleans it up and re-paints it and the original owner buys the refurbished bike back. Given that many kids think it is OK to just take things that are lying around, e.g., in a classroom, I am uncomfortable with this aspect of the story.

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