Ella and the useless day by Meg McKinlay and Karen Blair

Ella and her Dad decide to have a clean up day, after looking at their house, so full of useless things. They search, scramble and sort, poke, pick and pile, hunt, hoist and heave, filling their little car trailer with loads of things that are too old, too big, too small, too holey, or broken and altogether useless. Their next door neighbour takes the old bicycle, to him it is perfect. The lady at the end of the street asks if she can have the holey blankets as they are just what she needs. A jogger notices Dad’s old fashioned suit and jogs happily away with it. At the park two girls spy the leaking fishbowl, it is just what they want, while several other people take things from the trailer until, arriving at the dump Ella and her Dad find they have no useless things left in the trailer to leave behind.

A wonderfully witty tale of recycling and repurposing, children will begin to look around them with more than a cursory eye, seeing the things that are no longer useful to them, but may be useful to someone else.

Meg McKinlay’s sense of the unusual shines through as she uses alliterative words to describe the things they look for, or repeats the word useless at the start contrasting with the word useful in the last pages. Each of the neighbours finds just what they need from the trailer, prompting readers to think what their use might be. How could somebody really want a holed blanket or an 80’s suit or leaking fishbowl. Suggestions will come thick and fast from avid readers, eager to make something useless into something useful.

Blair’s watercolour and pencil illustrations add to the humour of the text, showing the pair as they dive into the useless things found in their home and shed, or fill the trailer, or leave behind stuff other people want to take, arriving empty handed at the dump. I love the front cover with the delicate balancing act by Dad, Ella and the dog, paralleling the fine line between useful and useless. And the last several pages where we see the use to which the useless objects have been put. The detail of the house and shed will titillate the imaginations of the readers, spying things others do not see, seeing out things which they may have at home, tucked away instead of being thrown out or recycled. And the endpapers too show the difference between useless and useful and I love the journey taken by Ella and her Dad, through the house then the neighbourhood and to the dump. A wonderful story promoting recycling and repurposing, but also being creative and encouraging a sense of community as the useless property is shared.

Themes: Recycling, Creativity, Community, Rubbish.

Fran Knight