Pop-Up House of Inventions

Crowther, Robert. 2009. Pop-Up House of Inventions: Hundreds of Fabulous Facts About Your Home. Candlewick.

Every now and then a book surprises me. Such is the case with Pop-Up House of Inventions. I expected it to be at least somewhat interesting. What I didn't expect was to find it entertaining and fascinating and oh-so-cool. Some pop-up books are more thrilling than others. Some are simple. Some are complex. Some are intricate. Some are amazingly intricate. Such is the case with Robert Crowther's Pop-Up House of Inventions. Each pop-up spread offers something--many somethings in fact--to delight and educate. Take the kitchen, for example, there are cabinet doors to open, refrigerator doors to open, an open/close oven with a pull-out tray of cookies, and a swishable washing machine with a wheel tab so you can make the clothes spin. Some of the kitchen facts include: first pop-up toaster, 1927; first microwave, 1945; the first electric clothes washer was patented in 1907, the inventor, Alva J. Fisher, named it "Thor." And that's just a handful from one page of the book. Rooms explored in the book include the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, the bedroom, and the garage. Among my favorites? I love that you can pull the tab on the shower to reveal a man singing in the shower. The bathroom mirror transforms to show a woman before-and-after make-up. Hint, she looks better before. But in the process, I learned that lipstick is at least four thousand years old and that Egyptians were all about eyeshadow.

I think this is a book anyone can enjoy--kids and adults alike.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
If you're reading this post on another site, or another feed, the content has been stolen.