57. A Year Without "Made in China" by Sara Bongiorni

On January 1, 2005, Sara Bongiorni’s family started a year long project that involved not buying goods that were made in China. During Christmas of 2004, Sara noticed that over 25 toys that her children received for Christmas were from China, while only 14 gifts they received were from other countries. Could her family survive a year without Chinese products, including toys, televisions, shoes, and coffee pots? Getting her husband on board was the first initial hurdle, and then trying to explain to her son why he couldn’t get things such as toys and Halloween decorations took up a large part of her year. Along the way, the Bongiorni family did make exceptions to their project – such as the allowance of gifts from friends or family of Chinese products, especially for birthday or Christmas celebrations. However, the remainder of the year saw the family double checking labels and placing calls to retailers to try to buy products not made in China.

This is a quirky study of a family that probably would be better suited for a magazine article than a full length book. There are many examples in the book about the difficulty of trying to buy toys for their children, whether it is for birthdays or holidays. There are also many plugs for Legos, one of the few toys the family found not to be made in China. This grew tiring after awhile, but it also showed how hard it is these days to buy items that aren’t made in China. It was also interesting to learn at the end of the book that the family decided that it couldn’t keep the project running after the year was up and went back to buying Chinese items in 2006. Will this book keep people from buying Chinese products? No, probably not. But it may get people interested in looking at labels and finding out where their items actually are made.