Follow Your Stuff: Who Makes It, Where Does It Come From, How Does It Get to You?

by Kevin Sylvester, Michael Hlinka

Overview

Our cellphones, our clothes, our food: All are everyday things we consider essential, but we seldom think of what and who is involved in making them and getting them into our hands. In Follow Your Stuff, award-winning children’s author Kevin Sylvester and business professor Michael Hlinka team up again, this time to tackle the complex dynamics of the global economy, examining the often-complex journey of ordinary goods from production right to our doorsteps.

Using familiar examples, easy-to-follow charts and graphs, and a big helping of humor, Hlinka and Sylvester introduce young readers to concepts such as relative value and fair wages and how to think critically about our purchasing decisions. Sylvester’s lively illustrations add even more kid-appeal making this sequel to the critically acclaimed Follow Your Money the perfect introduction to socio-economics and an eye-opening essential read for young people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781773212531
Publisher:	Annick Press, Limited
Publication date:	04/09/2019
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 10.90(h) x 0.20(d)
Lexile:	920L (what's this?)
Age Range:	11 - 12 Years

About the Author

Kevin Sylvester is an award-winning children’s book author, illustrator, and a former sports broadcaster on CBC radio. His books for Annick include Basketballogy, Baseballogy, and Follow Your Money. He lives with his family in Toronto, Ontario.

Michael Hlinka teaches college and university courses in Toronto and provides business commentary for CBC Radio.

Table of Contents

Follow Your Stuff | Table of Contents

Getting Ready to Go Global! 4

Good Global Question(s) 6

T-shirt? More Like A-to-Z-shirt! 10

A (Cot)ton of Fun 12

Creating Cloth 14

Stitching It Together 16

The Globals Get Their Cut 18

On the Road 20

Closing the Deal 22

Pause for the People 24

In Conclusion and In Your Shirt 26

Puffers and Meds 28

Take a Deep Breath 30

Getting the Raw Materials 32

Making the Medicine 34

Testing and Testing and . . . 36

. . . and Testing and Testing and . . . 38

Big Busine$$ 40

Setting the Price You Pay 42

In Conclusion and In Your Lungs 44

This Very Book 46

Sign on the Dotted Line! 48

Get to Work! 50

Rewriting and Rewriting and Rewriting and . . . 52

Putting It on Paper 54

The Book 56

Growing Global 58

The Bookstore 60

In Conclusion: Between the Covers 62

High Tech 64

Chips Off the Old Block 66

ZAP! 68

Hard Work and Hardware 70

Hard Work and Software 72

Phone Sweet Phone 74

Making the Call 76

In Conclusion: Adding It Up on Your

Calculator App! 78

See the Big Picture? 80

The Picture Is Smudgy 82

Interesting Questions One and Two 84

In Conclusion? Maybe? 86

The Concluding Conclusion—Part One 88

The Concluding Conclusion—Part Two 90

References and Further Reading 92

Index 94

About the Authors 96

Editorial Reviews

05/01/2019

Gr 5–8—This book charts the global production chain (resources and costs and labor) for four goods: T-shirts, prescription medications like inhalers, books, and cell phones. In the description of what it takes to make a T-shirt, there is a page detailing the raw materials and another about the logo. A third describes how a shop owner decides how much profit is needed. The narrative spells out the steps completely; however, the discussions following each section are detailed but not in-depth. The tradeoff is that some essential issues (such as precious metals in cell phones, with the associated geopolitics) are identified but not explained. The text is conversational and there are clip art-type illustrations to enhance the layout. The calculations are easy to follow and generally provide a good sense of how many things come together to make everyday items. This slim volume provides an ideal starting place for a project and would appeal to students highly motivated to understand the origins of common items and what it takes to produce them. A more general, multimedia treatment of this topic is Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff and its variants. VERDICT Recommended for middle school collections to support an Environmental Club or for research projects on the sourcing of everyday items.—Amy Thurow, Northside Elementary School, Sun Prairie, WI

School Library Journal

★ 2019-01-15

Where does your stuff come from? That question is answered for five items in this chatty book.

The creative duo behind Follow Your Money (2013) team up again to create a book that takes common items in the Western world—a T-shirt, an asthma inhaler, a cellphone, eyeglasses, and, cleverly, this book itself—and follows each from raw material to finished product. Beginning with the seed planted in China to grow the cotton for the cloth woven in Guatemala, through the cutter and seamstress in India as well as the printer in Mexico and finally to the store at the North American mall where the T-shirt is bought, Sylvester and Hlinka demonstrate how globally and humanly intertwined it is. Aspiring authors will be particularly fascinated at what it took to make the book they are reading. Each item's economic and physical journey is presented in a fact-based format with a lively design of dialogue bubbles, text, and illustrations (showing racially diverse kid consumers as well as workers from around the globe). Sidebars prod readers to think about the real cost of goods as they present facts about low wages and unsafe working conditions in developing nations, global environmental stresses, and other concerns, effectively challenging readers to consider what their money supports.

A thought-provoking breakdown of the real cost of all our cheap stuff. (references, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 10-16)

Kirkus Reviews