Toilet: How It Works, David Macaulay

Toilet, How It Works
David Macaulay
ISBN: 9781596437791
'My Readers' beginning chapter nonfiction.
Read January 31, 2014

It's all in the title.  I love Macaulay's older works where he disects buildings or things and uses specific, delightful language to showcase the wonders we have created as a species.  This nonfiction series focuses on more normal everyday things (an earlier book I browsed at a convention was about modern jet planes) that children are often curious or confused about.

For this particular title, we start with the biological reasons for waste (our digestive system) and then skip pretty quickly over to the waste-management end of things, with a bisected tank-and-bowl toilet mechanism, and then on to septic tanks and modern sewer systems, focusing on the waste-treatment end of the process.

A few minor quibbles; with water-conservation becoming so important, it would have been nice to see at least a low-flow toilet as another example, and really progressive to show a waterless toilet system for a real contrast.  In addition, it also would have been nice to see some of the interesting pipes and sewer systems that lead to the processing plant, to show off some beautiful and functional architecture before getting directly to the end-point of the works.

Otherwise, a really nifty short read for kids who are endlessly interested in 'why' and 'how' about our curious world.