50 Underwear Questions

February 1, 2012

Gr 5-8-Most kids might be surprised to find out just how much there is to tell about the part of their wardrobe they take for granted. Using a question-and-answer format, the book starts with ancient times and continues to the modern era and includes the garments and the culture and use associated with them. Sidebars include fascinating tidbits, e.g., people in medieval times soaked underwear in urine from a chamber pot to dissolve the dirt and added herbs to cover up the smell, and bits of history about what men and women wore. The book has an eye-catching design, with undergarments or cartoon characters wearing them pinned all around the pages. This will work as a fabulous booktalk for librarians looking for something fun and different to expand their nonfiction repertoire.-Esther Keller, I.S. 278, Marine Park, NY

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2011
Grades 4-7 Loincloths, panties, boxers, bloomersall different names for underwear. This extremely informative book takes a topic that is inherently interesting to kids and presents it in a manner that is both sprightly and nonsensational. The format, as the title indicates, is question-and-answer. Beginning with ancient undies, the questions cover everything from what's worn under certain kinds of dress to how the modern bra came into being, and reasons for wearing underclothes in the first place. But this is a book with panache, and the wording of the questions runs along the lines of: Can you battle in those breeches? Can we have some support here, please? What's the latest in loincloths? And, Did someone say wedgie'? Beyond the 50 questions, which take readers on a worldwide, historical tour, there's even more info in the numerous sidebars that offer anecdotes, games, and embellishments on each question. All this is illustrated in amusing cartoon-style art that isn't afraid to play up what's funny about the subject.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2011
Snappy writing gives this history some "briefs" appeal, but it's too scantily clad in specifics. "We all own it. We all wear it. We all wash it. (At least, I hope we do!)" Lloyd Kyi follows up 50 Burning Questions: A Sizzling History of Fire (2010) with a like number of posers on styles and changing fashions of undies worldwide and through history--though her view of the topic is broad enough to include mentions of loincloths, chain mail and other items more often worn as outerwear. She slips from the goatskin garment worn by the prehistoric "Iceman" and the mawashi that Japanese sumo wrestlers sport to contemporary undershorts with pockets for cellphones and the "union suit gone cyber" that astronauts wear while spacewalking. As colorful as her general observations and terse anecdotes are, though, there isn't much substance or system to her study--readers curious about the etymology of "skivvies" or "g-strings," what the "bejeweled undershirts" that were outlawed in London at some unspecified time looked like or the nature of the athletic "technology" developed by Under Armour will be left in the dark. Even when she does go into detail about, for instance, farthingales or how the Papua New Guinea women's maro displays marital status, instead of a helpful archival or other illustration, Kinnaird's cartoon images supply only jokey filler. A popular subject, but Lloyd Kyi never gets to the bottom of it. (further reading, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)