Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Inviting the reader to imagine a time traveler going back to early America, Ick! Yuck! Eew!: Our Gross American History by Lois Miner Huey makes history come alive. Describing American history in all its gross, minute detail, Huey focuses mainly on the odors and insects. She describes the inevitable aroma of the streets of New York City in the 1700s as pigs and cows roam the street freely. Did you know in South Carolina it was once illegal to kill a buzzard because they served to clean up the rotten meat from the marketplaces? The smells weren’t limited to the outdoors either. The smell of rotting food, forgotten chamber pots and the people themselves added to the overwhelming stench of the day. If the description of odors doesn’t fully engage the reader, the author moves on to describe the numerous flies, bedbugs, lice and parasites that Americans lived with in the 1700s. Describing the tremendous number of dead flies, Huey quotes the fictional time traveler as saying “they are gathered by the bushels” four times a day. Designed to pique the interest of children who may be bored to tears of traditional history lessons, Ick! Yuck! Eew! takes learning history to a whole new level.
For students of world history, try Oh, Yikes!: History’s Grossest, Wackiest Moments by Joy Masoff. Spanning the course of human history the book includes fascinating trivia from all elements of world including the history of clowns, diapers, plagues and underwear. Masoff includes wacky history like “idiotic inventions” (chicken eye glasses!), “humongous hoaxes” and “heinous hair,” as well as some informative timelines of history.
Fans of the You Wouldn’t Want to Be… series will love Ick! Yuck! Eew! and Oh, Yikes!
