Book Review

This book combines two of my favorite activities: The Outdoors! And Shopping Carts!

People are out wasting their time “birding” to find exotic birds but this is book is for the true soul of the outdoors!  The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America author Julian Montague has created an elaborate classification system of abandoned shopping carts, accompanied by photographic documentation of actual stray cart sightings. For instance, there’s the stray shopping cart at the edge of the grocery store parking lot but there’s also the cart stashed in the woods off the greenbelt trail – those are the true finds! It’s great for the kids. Have them hunt for these classics! Use the book as a checklist of all these shopping cart sightings. This will help the layperson to identify and classify their own cart spottings based on the situation in which they were found.

The photographs are so emotionally charged. Some pictures even brought tears to my eyes. I started seeing these carts as humans. Some were in their abandoned, decrepit state, some are hilariously incapacitated, and ingeniously co-opted. The result is very touching.