“What, you ask, is a chamber pot? / Well, here are things that it is not. / It’s not a pot to keep your money, / pretty flowers, toys, or honey.” Delivering juicy nuggets of cultural and historical information, both in fluent verse and in running prose commentary, this child-riveting study wipes Nicola A. Davies’s The Truth about Poop, illus by Elwood H. Smith (2004), off the map. Harper opens with a tally of the uses to which urine has been put worldwide (surrounded by “Don’t try this at home” warnings), closes with a rousing, gleefully repetitive paean to poop and spreads piquant observations on toilet paper’s predecessors, waste disposal through history and like topics in between. She illustrates it all with discreetly posed, Maira Kalman–style figures rendered in decidedly un-sludgy colors. Young listeners plunging into this savory survey will come away with tasty new words like “gongfermor” and “garderobe,” plenty of eminently share-worthy facts (Rome’s Cloaca Maxima is 16 feet wide, which is “43 sandwiches long / if you lay them side by side”) and sore cheeks—the facial sort—from laughing. (Picture book/poetry/nonfiction. 6-10)
Pub Date: March 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-316-01064-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2007
Absolutely wonderful in every way.
A long-forgotten chapter in New York City history is brilliantly illuminated.
In mid-19th-century New York, horses and horse-drawn vehicles were the only means of transportation, and the din created by wheels as they rumbled on the cobblestones was deafening. The congestion at intersections threatened the lives of drivers and pedestrians alike. Many solutions were bandied about, but nothing was ever done. Enter Alfred Ely Beach, an admirer of “newfangled notions.” Working in secret, he created an underground train powered by an enormous fan in a pneumatic tube. He built a tunnel lined with brick and concrete and a sumptuously decorated waiting room for passenger comfort. It brought a curious public rushing to use it and became a great though short-lived success, ending when the corrupt politician Boss Tweed used his influence to kill the whole project. Here is science, history, suspense, secrecy, and skulduggery in action. Corey’s narrative is brisk, chatty, and highly descriptive, vividly presenting all the salient facts and making the events accessible and fascinating to modern readers. The incredibly inventive multimedia illustrations match the text perfectly and add detail, dimension, and pizazz. Located on the inside of the book jacket is a step-by-step guide to the creative process behind these remarkable illustrations.
Absolutely wonderful in every way. (author’s note, bibliography, Web resources) (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-375-87071-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Strong rhythms and occasional full or partial rhymes give this account of P.T. Barnum’s 1884 elephant parade across the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge an incantatory tone. Catching a whiff of public concern about the new bridge’s sturdiness, Barnum seizes the moment: “’I will stage an event / that will calm every fear, erase every worry, / about that remarkable bridge. / My display will amuse, inform / and astound some. / Or else my name isn’t Barnum!’” Using a rich palette of glowing golds and browns, Roca imbues the pachyderms with a calm solidity, sending them ambling past equally solid-looking buildings and over a truly monumental bridge—which soars over a striped Big Top tent in the final scene. A stately rendition of the episode, less exuberant, but also less fictionalized, than Phil Bildner’s Twenty-One Elephants (2004), illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (author’s note, resource list) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-44887-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
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