Crashed, Smashed, and Mashed
 Joyce Slayton Mitchell,
 Photographs by Steven Borns
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2001 Tricycle Press, Berkeley, CA USA
  ISBN: 1582460345

A Trip to Junkyard Heaven to where 12 million cars are recycled in the US & Canada every year, now you can get to see it happen.

Crash! Another car is ready for the graveyard, so, chain it to the flatbed & head on in to find a final resting place. Drain the fluids, pull the engine & tires, then torch the assemblies so they can be reused. Then it's into the crusher & onto the shredder.

Many of the cars that find their way into junkyard heavens are there because they were going too fast or skidded on wet & icy roads while others simply fell apart, just plain worn out.

Up on the forklift goes the crashed car & the dismantler begins to drain all the fluids. There are seven in a car's system.

While the carcass is up on the forklift, all the tires are taken off & discarded. There is a lot of recycling of auto parts like batteries, radios & engines.

In time the stripped autos are fed into the crusher which compresses them until they are only two feet high, perfect for stashing on top of each other into bundles. Bundles of cars? What an image!

& then their fed into the recycling shredding machine which is a monster that rips, sifts, blows & sorts until all that's left are fist-sized pieces of metal.

With bold, bright photos & simple, engaging language, Joyce Slayton Mitchell & Stephen Borns takes us through Junkyard Heaven from start to finish. They even provide us with a glossary & recycling facts.

A good learning & talking book & a must for every kid, young & old, who drools at the sight of a junkyard!

More from Joyce Slayton Mitchell: Tractor-Trailer Trucker(also reviewed); A Special Delivery: Letters from Afar & Winning the Chemo Battle.

Steven Burns is a photojournalist & magazine photographer. He is also an inveterate collector of stuff. He has authored: People of Plains, GA & was the photographer for Tractor-Trailer Trucker.
(04/22/01)

Rebecca