Reviews
Small children explore water cycles in four thematically related but independent minibooks.
The individual titles themselves don’t always tell the tale. In “Where Does Wee-Wee Come from, Mum?” and “Where Does Wee-Wee Go to, Mum?” a child’s rhymed queries to a succession of adults lead him back along the water line from home to clouds and ocean, then from his “pottie” through sewers to a purification plant and back around. In contrast, “What Can We Do with Our Poo, Mum?” and “Why Is There No More Water, Mum?” shift the setting to an African village, where one lad learns that his drinking water is “full of smelly dirt” thanks to seepage from local garbage dumps, and another follows his mother on her daily trek to a distant tap because there is no nearby well. Sprightly background music, plus every screen’s touch-activated sighs, chuckles or small movements add further life to the bright, elementally simple art. A reference to the Water Board and other language point to the stories’ European origins, but most of the information is applicable or understandable on this side of the Atlantic—and if it’s startling to hear dialogue in the latter pair of tales voiced by an adult with a Scottish accent, the optional audio, particularly the child’s parts, are read throughout with engaging vivacity.
Though at first glance these look like preschool fare, they are eye-openers for any young readers who think their drinking and waste water appear and vanish by magic. (iPad informational app. 5-8)
www.kirkusreview.com
Why shoul'd we save water?
Let’s save water! This is a unique and extremely important book in our day and age, all about why we need to save water and how we can do it. The simple line drawings and very funny text introduce children to the world of water, informing them and at the same time reminding their parents that clean running water is a luxury we often fail to appreciate.
National Geographic Traveler
Who invented school?
School taught me how to read, write and count, but above all it taught me to think. It gave me wings, thanks to which I can do whatever I like. This book tells us how much we owe to our education, which from the earliest times has always been the driving force for progress. And it tells the sad truth that for some children school is still hard to come by, a luxury only available to the chosen few. What a shame for the world.
Katarzyna Kolenda-Zaleska (Fakty TVN)
I went to four schools in my life. I was happy to go to all of them, though I wasn’t too fond of studying, but I had lots of friends at school, including girlfriends whom I started taking more notice of a bit later on. The first school was a big red-brick block in the centre of Kraków. In my class one boy was so naughty that the teacher ignored the rest of us, the less badly behaved children. After the third year I was transferred to another school, in a new building on a new housing estate on the edge of town. There were forty-four of us in my class, and most of the boys still couldn’t read fluently or write properly. I could, so the teacher there didn’t bother with me much either. My high school was also in a large old building in the city centre, but this time the teachers did pay me some attention, because there weren’t any naughty children in the class. It all went well for me, because thanks to their efforts I got into university. It wasn’t quite so good there, because there were no teachers to pour out your woes to, but I did meet lots of new girlfriends from all over Poland. Nowadays I miss that sort of school too.
After reading this book I might enrol at the university of the third age, which is a sort of playschool for old people.
Robert Makłowicz
