This Book is Cruelty-Free by Linda Newbery

This Book is Cruelty-Free

by Linda Newbery

How do the everyday choices you make affect animals and the environment? This book looks at all the things you can do to live cruelty free. 

It's a guide for older children and teenagers concerned about animals, wildlife and the planet we live on.

Packed with information on how to live a cruelty-free life, it includes sections on:

Using your spending power. The choices we make - what to eat, what to buy, what to wear – and how these affect animals. Asking questions and reading labels.

Cruelty-free fashion and beauty.

What's on your plate? Being vegetarian or vegan, or just eating less meat? What impact can your diet have on cruelty and on the environment?

Should you have a pet? If so, would your pet choose you as its owner? Points to consider before bringing an animal into your home.

Animals on show. Do zoos and animal parks look after animals or exploit them? Good zoos and their important conservation work.

Watching wild animals. Watching and learning about wildlife - building an appreciation of nature and helping your mental wellbeing.

Love those bugs! Many people are squeamish about insects, but these creatures are vital to ecosystems.

Don’t throw it away – there is no away. Simple things everyone can do to avoid waste: recycling, re-using, choosing plastic-free. Resist the throwaway culture.

Where do you draw your line? What can you realistically achieve? Some of the difficulties, especially if family / friends don’t agree with you. What are the best (and worst) ways of influencing others? How to feel confident with your decisions.

How to handle everyday situations and counter arguments.

Campaigning - anti-cruelty organisations to support. The power of protest.

This book will help you to live as cruelty-free as possible and to examine all of the areas in your life where you can help animals and the environment.

Choose to live without cruelty. Choose this book and find out how.

 

Reviewed by Quirky Cat on

4 of 5 stars

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A disclosure before I begin my review: I picked up This Book is Cruelty Free for several reasons. For one thing, I am a vegetarian, and recently I've been trying to monitor my impact on the world. Not just in regards to animals, but the environment as well. So naturally, a novel like this instantly appealed to me.

This Book is Cruelty Free, written by Linda Newbery, is intended to be a guide to help readers lessen their negative impact on the world. It is admittedly more focused on the animal side of things, far from being a bad thing.

I love that the book is broken down into easy-to-digest sections. Not only does it make the whole concept feel more approachable, but it's more useful this way too. People looking to adjust a specific part of their lives can more easily find the resources required this way.

I would recommend reading The Omnivore's Dilemma for anybody looking for a more in-depth view of the food industry side of things. This Book is Cruelty Free does a great job of covering the basics, but there's a lot more to learn as well.

I do have one criticism of this novel that I hate to bring up, but I feel like I must: One of the citations comes from PETA. From the outside, this may look like a sound source to pull from – but if you do your research, you'll understand how damaging PETA actually is to the animal rights cause. It left a bad taste in my mouth, seeing them listed within this book. It put everything else covered into question. Again, I hate to bring this up, but it would be dishonest of me to ignore this point. So to be fair, I am docking an entire star from my rating.

Thanks to Pavilion Books and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Read more reviews over at Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 2 August, 2021: Finished reading
  • 2 August, 2021: Reviewed