Keeping Clean: A Very Peculiar History

Forms part of a series in which each title begins in the earliest times and traces its subject through to the present day. "Keeping Clean" explores all aspects of human cleanliness from soap to lavatories.

Gr. 4^-7. If "sanitation history" sounds dull, you haven't read this book, which middle-schoolers will love. The need to dispose of waste and to cleanse the body and clothing have been constants throughout human history. Kerr shares different cultures' solutions to these problems, from the ancient world to the present, in 18 double-page spreads of text and small, captioned, colored drawings arranged variously on the pages (including restrained pictures of multiseat and individual toilets as well as bathing devices in use). Concluding pages offer a glossary and a collection of "factoids" --for example, "in the 1920s, the city of Aurora, Illinois, passed a law saying that all citizens must take a bath at least once a week or go to prison." Overall, readers may feel a unity with, and even admiration for, the persistent ingenuity of our ancestors regarding these common problems. See the Series Roundup, this issue, for two other equally engrossing books in the A Very Peculiar History series. Mary Harris Veeder