The Big Book of Gross Stuff

The Big Book of Gross Stuff by Bart King. Published by Gibbs Smith on March 1, 2010.

"No one ever says so, but gross stuff is sort of magical." This quote from one of the first pages of the book perfectly describes the weird fascination that many children (and adults) have with the grosser side of things in this world. As such, this book is full of various fun facts and anecdotes about some pretty disgusting stuff, ranging from artificial digestive systems to discussing how many germs there are in spit as opposed to urine. To be honest, this book really isn't my cup of tea. But I completely understand how it appeals to children, and I'm sure everyone can think of at least one kid in their life who would love it.

Subject matter aside, this book's layout and form is pretty interesting. The main body of the text is a series of stories and paragraphs describing specific gross things in life. But there are also illustrations depicting the grossness, as well as special pages such as one dedicated to a vocabular of gross words and a quiz that lets readers determine how interested in gross stuff they are on a scale of "The Accountant" to "The Enthusiast". Even as someone with little to no interest in this subject, I still had fun reading it because there were so many different things to see and read about. It's a very pack-full book with actual information in it that children can learn from. Is the information gross? Sure. But they're still learning, and an interest in this book might encourage reluctant readers to start reading more.

I'm not sure if this book would be a good choice for reading out loud in a classroom, but it would be interesting to see it somehow incorporated into a science class. Using the information in the book, the teacher could conduct "gross" experiments with the students such as making slime or something similar. This could get the children interesting in reading books as well as scientific experiments.

There are numerous books like this out there, but I would specifically suggest Animal Grossology: The Science of Creatures Gross and Disgusting by Sylvia Branzei. This book covers gross infromation about animals in particular and teaches the children about the animals along the way. You may also want to look into Weird but True Gross: 300 Slimy, Sticky, and Smelly Facts by National Geographic Kids. This book covers a broad variety of topics, but all of them related back to the same theme of being gross.