Here are 100 books that Poop Happened! A History of the World from the Bottom Up fans have personally recommended if you like
Poop Happened! A History of the World from the Bottom Up.
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I used to be a freelance writer for magazines, but my secret passion was kids’ lit. When I decided to become a children’s author, I wanted to write nonfiction that was fun to read, not the dull, boring books I remembered from my childhood. When I discovered the first three books on my list, I was inspired to free up my funny bone and write to delight. The second two books also showcase innovative formats and humorous writing styles. Reading nonfiction doesn’t have to be a chore. These books will have children laughing while they learn.
Steve Sheinkin has added all the juicy details that textbooks normally leave out. We learn that Sam Adams was a slob, John Adams was a bore, and Benjamin Franklin liked to party with the French. How this bunch of disgruntled Americans was able to pull off one of the greatest revolutions the world has ever seen is almost a miracle. Middle school kids will love the snarky tone that makes this nonfiction book as much fun as a reality tv show.
New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Honor recipient Steve Sheinkin gives young readers an American history lesson they'll never forget in the fun and funny King George: What Was His Problem?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the American Revolution, featuring illustrations by Tim Robinson.
A Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year A New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing
What do the most famous traitor in history, hundreds of naked soldiers, and a salmon lunch have in common? They’re all part of the amazing story of the American Revolution.
I used to be a freelance writer for magazines, but my secret passion was kids’ lit. When I decided to become a children’s author, I wanted to write nonfiction that was fun to read, not the dull, boring books I remembered from my childhood. When I discovered the first three books on my list, I was inspired to free up my funny bone and write to delight. The second two books also showcase innovative formats and humorous writing styles. Reading nonfiction doesn’t have to be a chore. These books will have children laughing while they learn.
In my opinion, this book has one of the best titles ever! I’ve always been fascinated by old-timey bad medicine, and I wasn’t disappointed. Poor George Washington died of a sore throat, but alas, no antibiotics back then. The leading doctors in the country took turns treating America’s first president. They tried bloodletting twice, blistering (being bitten by poisonous beetles), and gave him toxic potions that made him throw up. After all of that, he was begging to die, and he did. This book is brilliantly gross and disgusting, while still being delightfully humorous and informative. Highly recommended for ages ten and up.
This award-winning book for reluctant readers is a fascinating collection of remarkable deaths--and not for the faint of heart.
Over the course of history, men and women have lived and died. In fact, getting sick and dying can be a big, ugly mess--especially before the modern medical care that we all enjoy today. From King Tut's ancient autopsy to Albert Einstein's great brain escape, How They Croaked contains all the gory details of the awful ends of nineteen awfully famous people.
Don't miss the companion, How They Choked!
I used to be a freelance writer for magazines, but my secret passion was kids’ lit. When I decided to become a children’s author, I wanted to write nonfiction that was fun to read, not the dull, boring books I remembered from my childhood. When I discovered the first three books on my list, I was inspired to free up my funny bone and write to delight. The second two books also showcase innovative formats and humorous writing styles. Reading nonfiction doesn’t have to be a chore. These books will have children laughing while they learn.
Readers learn about how animals’ feet help them adapt to their environment. For example, the Green Basilisk Lizard has long, fringed toes that allow it to run across the surface of water. I love the innovative format of this book. Each spread has one page of informational text with actual photos next to a corresponding page with imaginative illustrations of children with that particular animal’s foot. This series includes feet, hair, eyes, ears, teeth, tail, and nose and is perfect for elementary school students.
If you could have any animal's feet, whose would you choose?
WHAT IF YOU HAD ANIMAL FEET? is the next book in the successful WHAT IF series by Sandra Markle, illustrated by Howard McWilliam, following the very popular WHAT IF YOU HAD ANIMAL TEETH? and WHAT YOU IF HAD ANIMAL HAIR? This latest edition will teach kids about the amazing variety of feet in the animal kingdom and their specialty functions! From cheetahs' fast feet to mountain goats' nimble climbing hooves, to flies' sticky feet! Each animal profile will include a photo as well as illustrations of kids with animal…
I used to be a freelance writer for magazines, but my secret passion was kids’ lit. When I decided to become a children’s author, I wanted to write nonfiction that was fun to read, not the dull, boring books I remembered from my childhood. When I discovered the first three books on my list, I was inspired to free up my funny bone and write to delight. The second two books also showcase innovative formats and humorous writing styles. Reading nonfiction doesn’t have to be a chore. These books will have children laughing while they learn.
Written in a kid-friendly, conversational style, this book is full of scientific information about how animals’ bottoms are perfectly adapted to their environment. It also has surprising facts that kids won’t forget. Did you know that a wombat’s poop is cube-shaped? As Rish puts it, “They produce 80 to 100 caca cubes per night…” At the end of the book, readers are asked to vote for their choice of the best animal butt. This super-fun nonfiction that will keep elementary students reading past their bedtime.
Butts are funny, but they're also useful! Humans use their butts for two primary functions--sitting and pooping. It's the same for most other animals. However, some species have adapted to use their backsides in several surprising ways. Did you know manatees swim using farts? Or that herrings communicate by passing gas? There are animals that use their butts to protect themselves; others build things with their butts; and some breathe through their butts! Focusing on ten different animals and their derrieres, and offering fun facts about their origin, habitat, and "posterior power," this hilarious book captures the wonder of our…
In junior high, I happened across a picture of an armor-plated knight being raised by a winch to sit astride his destrier. What a ridiculous time period, I thought. After raiding every related book in the school library, I changed my opinion from “ridiculous” to “fascinating.” Particularly when deciding that periods such as the fourteenth century, with its plagues, wars, political upheavals, and climate change were pretty much a distorted mirror of our own. Throughout my life as wife, mother, novelist, and social justice advocate, I’ve held medieval England close to my heart. I remain forever grateful I’ve been able to explore it both in my writing and in several treks across the pond.
Another beautifully written book recounting the first popular uprising in English history. Would the revolt even have occurred without the Black Death and the subsequent upheaval caused by labor shortages, rising wages, population migrations? The author subsequently draws similarities between 1381 and contemporary conditions, making a compelling case for the axiom: history often rhymes. (When promoting American Independence, Thomas Paine championed the rebels, as did supporters of the French Revolution.) I particularly enjoyed delving into the life of the radical priest, John Ball, whose (largely fictional) voice continues to inspire those who ask, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”
Written with the fluency readers have come to expect from Juliet Barker, 1381: The Year of the Peasants' Revolt provides an account of the first great popular uprising in England and its background, and paints on a broad canvas a picture of English life in medieval times. Skeptical of contemporary chroniclers' accounts of events, Barker draws on the judicial sources of the indictments and court proceedings that followed the rebellion. This emphasis offers a fresh perspective on the so-called Peasants' Revolt and gives depth and texture to the historical narrative. Among the book's arguments are that the rebels believed they…
Since childhood I have wanted to know why things look as they do. Every object expresses what was once an idea in someone’s mind. Looking from things to the people who made them and back again, we understand both better. This single question has led me through a lifetime of writing about material culture, architecture, applied art and craft. I have written books about Stonehenge, the Gothic Revival and antiquarianism in the Romantic age. I also hosted a podcast series, for the London Review of Books.
The 1960s saw Britain destroy more of its own built environment than all the bombing of the second world war. The car was king, the high rise and the shopping precinct transformed city centres. In many cases this is now seen as a disaster. Otto Saumarez Smith, one of the brightest of the rising generation of architectural writers, tells us how and why it happened, why it stopped and why he has come to love some of it.
Boom Cities is the first published history of the profound transformations of British city centres in the 1960s.
It has often been said that urban planners did more damage to Britain's cities than even the Luftwaffe had managed, and this study details the rise and fall of modernist urban planning, revealing its origins and the dissolution of the cross-party consensus, before the ideological smearing that has ever since characterized the high-rise towers, dizzying ring roads, and concrete precincts that were left behind.
The rebuilding of British city centres during the 1960s drastically affected the built form of urban Britain, including…
I’d already published a scholarly book about the household of a medieval widow, who was just a decade older than Margery Kempe and lived sixty miles away, so the time, place, and mindset seemed very familiar. As a Jungian Psychoanalyst I’m interested in how individuals find the central meaning in their lives. Clearly for Margery it was the search for God, although she doesn’t appear to have been a kindly soul. When I read that she twice quarreled with her maidservant, I realised the maidservant could tell her own tale. And so she did, and sometimes it seemed she was dictating it to me! Characters really do speak for themselves...
I find it difficult to have any admiration for Margery Kempe since I don’t believe she was a mystic – she was frequently quarrelsome, meddling, vain and judgmental, and those who travelled on pilgrimage with her often wanted to get as far away from her as possible. Bale, however, has sympathy for this troubled soul and explores her life through the text of her book, focusing on the places she visited, her friends and enemies, objects she admired, and her intense feelings which were on a dramatic spectrum from despair to bliss. After reading A Mixed Life I still don’t think Margery is deserving of sainthood but, like her long-suffering maidservant, I appreciate her a little more and respect her tenacity and dedication to her religious quest.
This is a new account of the late-fourteenth-century mystic and pilgrim Margery Kempe. Kempe, who had 14 children, travelled all over Europe and recorded a series of unusual events and religious visions in her work The Book of Margery Kempe, which is often called the first autobiography in the English language. Anthony Bale charts her life, and tells her story through the places, relationships, objects and experiences that influenced her. Extensive quotation from Kempe's Book, and generous illustration, gives fascinating insight into the life of a medieval woman. Margery Kempe is situated within the religious controversies of her time, and…
Having grown up on the south coast of Hampshire, I love both the countryside and the sea. After studying ancient history, archaeology, and Latin at the University of Bristol, I worked for many years as a field archaeologist and met my husband Roy on an excavation of a Roman villa at Milton Keynes. We have worked together ever since, as archaeologists and as authors of books on archaeology, ancient history, naval history, and social history. Our wide-ranging interests proved invaluable when writing our book When There Were Birds.
This is a glorious bird-by-bird book, filled with photographs and lots of information and first-hand accounts, including folklore and history, with copious endnotes and references. It was first published in 2005 and reissued in 2020. The book is divided into different bird families, starting with the Diver family, the Grebe family, and the Albatross family, so it can be read systematically or by dipping in and out. Birds Britannica perhaps deserves the name ‘coffee-table book’ – being so heavy, it is almost impossible to read unless seated (with a coffee) at a table.
The British love their birds, which are inextricably entwined with every aspect of their island life. British customs, more than 1,000 years of English literature, the very fabric of society, even the landscape itself, have all been enhanced by the presence of birds. Highly acclaimed on first publication, this superb book pays tribute to the remarkable relationship forged between a nation and its most treasured national heritage.
Birds Britannica is a unique publication of immense importance. Neither an identification guide nor a behavioural study (although both these subjects enter its field), it concentrates on our social history and on the…
I made up Faythe of North Hinkapee by being a jerk! I was ranting about
how bad a "best seller" book I had read was. My wife looked at me and
said, "So, could you write a bestseller?" I was challenged, and then,
somehow, this book just tumbled out. It was about a girl in Colonial
Times—her family burned as witches—vowing vengeance and how she gets
it. My wife looked at me and said: “My God, that could be a bestseller!’ My kids also loved the story. For about twenty years, I
planned to write it, and after a ton of work, I finally finished.
I utterly loved this book so much it is in the top five books I ever read. Although it is years since I read it I still remember Aliena (the main female character) so well it is as if I know her personally. I wish there were a sequel with her in it.
The book had it all – a fantastic plot that grabs you from the first chapter and then branches off into seemingly unconnected subplots, and it is only at the end that it all comes together. An amazing job and inspired me more than any other book as a writer.
The "extraordinary . . . monumental masterpiece" (Booklist) that changed the course of Ken Follett's already phenomenal career-and begins where its prequel, The Evening and the Morning, ended.
"Follett risks all and comes out a clear winner," extolled Publishers Weekly on the release of The Pillars of the Earth. A departure for the bestselling thriller writer, the historical epic stunned readers and critics alike with its ambitious scope and gripping humanity. Today, it stands as a testament to Follett's unassailable command of the written word and to his universal appeal.
I’ve worked in and around journalism long enough to know that not all journalists are heroes. Few even aspire to be. But there is something quietly heroic about the daily task of holding the powerful to account, even in democracies where the risk of imprisonment or assassination is less than in more authoritarian states. Here is my selection of books to remind all of us about some of these more heroic aspects of the journalism trade. I hope you find reading them enjoyable and maybe even inspiring.
If fictional journalists are your thing, then this book will almost certainly introduce you to some you’ve never heard of as well as those you (really should) have. Lonsdale insightfully identifies and dissects themes that crop up time after time in creative writing about journalists, from swashbuckling rogues to unethical scumbags. In the process, she has plenty to say about the craft of journalism itself and its enduring value to society. There is humour too, as when she quotes the immortal line of Stella Gibbons (author of Cold Comfort Farm): "The life of the journalist is poor, nasty, brutish and short. So is his style." Lovely.
Why did Edwardian novelists portray journalists as swashbuckling, truth-seeking super-heroes whereas post-WW2 depictions present the journalist as alienated outsider? Why are contemporary fictional journalists often deranged, murderous or intensely vulnerable? As newspaper journalism faces the double crisis of a lack of trust post-Leveson, and a lack of influence in the fragmented internet age, how do cultural producers view journalists and their role in society today?
In The Journalist in British Fiction and Film Sarah Lonsdale traces the ways in which journalists and newspapers have been depicted in fiction, theatre and film from the dawn of the mass popular press to…
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