Author/illustrator: David Macaulay with Neil Ardley
Date of Publication: 1988
ISBN: 0-395-938-47-3
Publisher: Dorling Kindersley
David Macaulay is an internationally known author and illustrator of books about architecture. He has written books on cathedrals, pyramids, castles. The New Way Things Work was written with Neil Ardley, a science and technology writer. This book explains how things work in technical language that is written in a way that an older child or young adult can understand. This book is something people of all ages can enjoy because it explains how things in everyday life work, and many of us never learn this stuff. The chapters include the incline plane, levers, the wheel and axle, pulleys, frictions, and mechanics of movement. Many of the explanations are given through very precise illustrations. They have step by step instructions on how things work. The. Text is accompanied by very detailed but also charming drawings. One thing that makes it fun for children is a cute woolly mammoth that is drawn throughout the book. You see woolly mammoths in humorous situations. The wooly mammoth stories make its entertaining. For example, incline plane is explained by showing how a wooly mammoth was tamed. We learn how to weigh a woolly mammoth. These drawings are both technically detailed and very whimsical. Other chapters in the book explain working with electricity and wave lengths, the digital domain, and the invention of machines. There is a section on cars, batteries, solar panels, computers; he covers just about everything. This is a great book for a student who is interested in reading about informative texts. It is over 300 pages, so most people will not read it cover to cover. But for a student interested in technical stuff and not that interested in fiction, this is a great book. It could also be used as a reference book. This book should definitely be in middle school and high school classrooms. I give it 5 out of 5 stars for the great illustrations and step by step explanations. If I read this book I would be a much smarter person. It is the ultimate informational text.
This was one of my favorite books as a child. I loved looking at the detailed drawings of the internal workings of machines. It's a very cool concept.
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