A humorous and clever tale about toilet tools.
A comedic, nonfiction picture book explores the history of human hygiene and toilet paper.
Starting at the beginning of human history (200,000 years ago, according to Gholz’s timeline), this creative story examines potty tools. Early substitutes for toilet paper and hand towels included seashells, grass, moss, and leaves. The author fast-forwards to ancient Mesopotamia’s ceramic and brick nonflushing toilets and makes a stop at ancient Rome’s public toilets—recommended “if you don’t mind pottying in public and sharing a tersorium (a bum brush) with others.” She then proceeds to the invention of paper in China in 79 C.E. But it takes many years before flushing toilets and commercial toilet paper hit the market, and Gholz and illustrator Teimoy indulge in silliness every step of the way. In endnotes, the author explains that sources differ regarding many facts about toilet origins, but the inventors and time periods in the book are the most commonly accepted. For sheer potty humor, Gholz has hit gold, and the use of simple language and sentence structures allows emergent and newly independent readers to experience the comedy confidently. Teimoy’s diverse cartoon illustrations capture the humor of early potty techniques (for example, a bidet user in 1700s France loses her balance while getting a “spritz”). For some readers, the specifics of how toilet paper was invented and marketed may come as a revelation. In addition, this history of how humans have gone to the bathroom delivers plenty of gross, gleeful details that science lovers will enjoy.
A humorous and clever tale about toilet tools.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 9780762475551
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston...
A memorable, lyrical reverse-chronological walk through the life of an American icon.
In free verse, Cline-Ransome narrates the life of Harriet Tubman, starting and ending with a train ride Tubman takes as an old woman. “But before wrinkles formed / and her eyes failed,” Tubman could walk tirelessly under a starlit sky. Cline-Ransome then describes the array of roles Tubman played throughout her life, including suffragist, abolitionist, Union spy, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. By framing the story around a literal train ride, the Ransomes juxtapose the privilege of traveling by rail against Harriet’s earlier modes of travel, when she repeatedly ran for her life. Racism still abounds, however, for she rides in a segregated train. While the text introduces readers to the details of Tubman’s life, Ransome’s use of watercolor—such a striking departure from his oil illustrations in many of his other picture books—reveals Tubman’s humanity, determination, drive, and hope. Ransome’s lavishly detailed and expansive double-page spreads situate young readers in each time and place as the text takes them further into the past.
A picture book more than worthy of sharing the shelf with Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney’s Minty (1996) and Carole Boston Weatherford and Kadir Nelson’s Moses (2006). (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2047-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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