By Joy Masoff
Published at Workman
About the book
Gross is back and viler than ever! From the author of Oh, Yuck! the perennial bestseller about science with over 610,000 copies in print, comes OH, YIKES!, an illustrated encyclopedia of history’s messiest, dumbest, grossest, wackiest, and weirdest moments.
If kids think pus and gas are fun, wait until they hear the lowdown on the real Dracula, samurai, gladiators, guillotines and vomitoriums, pirates, Vikings, witch trials, and the world’s poxiest plagues. Impeccably researched, deliciously wry, and subversively educational (check out the toilet-paper timeline), OH, YIKES! covers people, events, institutions, and really bad ideas, alphabetically from April Fool’s Day to zany Zoos. Here are the Aztecs, sacrificing 250,000 people a year for the gods—and for food. Fearsome Attila the Hun, scourge of the steppes whose spinning eyes terrified his friends and whose mastery of horses terrorized his enemies (how does someone so evil die? Nosebleed!). Saur, the 11th-century dog-king of Norway (and not too bad as kings go). Henry VIII and his marital problems, the story of the Abominable Snowman and the Loch Ness Monster, why sailors in the old days preferred eating in the dark (hint: you can’t see what’s crawling in your food), and the answer to the question, “How did knights in armor go to the bathroom?”
Topped off with hundreds of illustrations and photographs along with hands-on activities that bring the past to life, OH, YIKES! puts the juice in history in a way that makes it irresistible.
My Thoughts
We have reviewed OH, Ick! in the past and I was highly interested when I realized that this new title was all about history.
This book is different than other history book because it will highlight the worst inventions and events that has happened through the ages. So as the title suggest it, it will be gross at times but so informative as well.
The various chapters or themes covered in the book are: Attila and the Huns, Aztec Antics, Beastly Babyhood, Burial Customs, Cave Dudes, Circus Clowning, Crafty Cats, Crazy Calendars, Creepy Columbus, Cruel Constructions, Cussin’ Cowboys, Dastardly Dentistry, Dog-Gone Dogs, Dreadful Dracula, Dumb Duels, Electric Shocks, Everyday Executions, Farfetched Fashions, Freaky Flyers, Ghastly Games, Gladiators, Guillotines, Heinous Hair, Horrible Henry the 8th, Humongous Hoaxes, Idiotic Inventions, Junky Jobs, Killer Kings, Knight Time, Lewis and Clark, Miserable Medicines, Moldy Money, Musty Mummies, Nutty Napoleon, Oozy Olympics, Outrageous Outlaws, Pirates, Plagues and Poxes, Prickly Presidents, Prisons and Punishments, Quirky Queens, Rip-Roarin’ Railroads, Salt Assault, Samurai and Shoguns, School Dazed, Sinking Ships, Smelly Shoes, Strange Sports, Stupid Superstitions, Tickin’ Time, Toilet Paper, Ugh! Underwear, Vicious Vikings, Wacky Warfare, Whales Tales, Wicked Witches, X-Files, Zany Zoos.
Since we studied Columbus a bit this year, I decided to select the section about him and his time period to tell you a bit about the kind of information you will find in the book. The section about Columbus will present information about how the food was stored back in these days compared to our beloved refrigerator nowadays. You will also read a bit about Christopher Columbus’ past when he was young and discover how he decided to become a navigator and explorer. In all there are five pages covering the history of Columbus (or Cristobal Colon as we learned this year) and how he tried to find a way to obtain spices…
I find this book fun to read because it will present an aspect that is not often shown in other history books – the gross parts of living in different era of time. It is a fun book to have in your personal library for all the disgusting information in it. But it is not for the soft stomach person…. The information at times could be revolting but when you think about it…. it happened in history and people lived like that in the past.
Oh, Yikes! is available for purchase at your favorite bookstore, even on amazon.ca and amazon.com.
Disclaimer: Thanks to Thomas Allen for sending me the above mentioned books for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.
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