How Things Work

This is a thoroughly modern information book: highly visual, interactive and linked to websites. In each example the main picture shows the external structure and you lift the flap for an explanation of how the machine works. The copious yet clear annotation shows young readers the importance of the verbal as well as the visual in texts that explain.

Global organization is coherent: double spreads cover themes such as the workings of cranes (under the heading ‘Movers & shakers’), cars and bicycles (under the heading ‘Getting going’) and a domestic water system under the heading ‘Waterworks’.

When it comes to page design, the book is a small masterpiece of compressed and lucid explanation. But are there too many examples packed into each double spread? I think you have to be a sophisticated reader not to be overwhelmed by such richness and detail. Teachers can help here of course. But I cannot help feeling that some of the structures and their functions are so involved and challenging for young readers, the workings of a car’s engine for example, that they deserved more space. David Macaulay gave each of his machines much more headroom in his classic explanation book The Way Things Work. Nevertheless there is room for more than one approach and this book deserves a place on the primary school science shelf.