Well apparently an elephant produces a mind blowing pongy 20 kilos of dung a day! How Much Poo Does an Elephant Do? is another book by Mitchell Symons that has lots of quirky, weird and wonderful trivia for you. I found this one fascinating: in India the term “man-eating” is only applied to tigers that have killed three or more people. Man-eating tigers are usually too old to capture wild animals. Isn’t that wild or what! So check out this book. If you like it then also try other books by the same author How to Avoid a Wombat’s Bum and Why Eating Bogeys is Good for You.
Disgusting facts
Funny Books
I found a really, really cool looking book while I was putting books away today. It’s called Why eating bogeys is good for you. In my last post, I talked about jokes being funny when they have a punch line that takes your brain by surprise. Another way that jokes can be funny is when they are a little bit “naughty” or impolite. Polite boys and girls don’t talk about eating bogeys, do they? Especially around their grannies! But disgusting facts and stories can be so much fun. For example, one of my favourite stories is by Paul Jennings called ‘Little Squirt’ in Unmentionable: Disgusting!! But hilarious!
WARNING: be very careful with impolite jokes. Choose the right time and place to tell them otherwise you may get into trouble – and that is definitely not funny!
Vile Things
Here’s a book that is loaded with interesting facts about the strange, foul and the most repellent things on Earth! Did that get your attention? Here is an example, the sea apple when threatened, vomits its entire digestive system at its attacker! Yikes! It even includes a favorite delicacy from my country, the Philippines. Its a fruit called the durian, also nicknamed “King of Fruits”. It is really the most delicious fruit you could ever taste the only catch is that it smells terrible! But it’s soooo terribly delicious. I used to eat it with my hands pinching my nose. If you want to know more about this stuff check out “The Search for Vile Things” Volume 1 by Jane Hammersbough. I guarantee you’ll like it!
Ripley’s Believe It or Not!!!!
Yes the 2009 Ripley’s Believe It or Not edition is here. It even has a special glow on the dark cover! It has awesome and mind boggling facts as always. I am always amazed at the unbelievable things that people and animals and nature can come up with. Read on about body oddities, animal antics and the strange but true. See what a man from Ukraine who has size 17 inches shoes and is 8ft and 4 inches tall looks like. What is a twisted tongue? Go on and check this book out I assure you you’ll really enjoy it!
New non-fiction for February at a library near you
Are you interested in how stuff like mobile phones really work? If you are then you’ll love Cool Stuff Exploded. Learn all about gadgetry including things you might see in the future!
The Search for Vile Things (Volume 1) is all about bizarre and gross plants, food, insects and customs from around the world. There are enough disgusting and interesting facts in here to last you at least four weeks.
Also new: books about ballet, rare animals, octopi (octopuses – cool!), and phenomena and unexplainable things. For the latest in children’s non-fiction keep checking My Library – you can see what fiction, picture books, CDs and DVDs we’ve got too!
Smelly and Stinky Stuff!
I’ve just flipped open a book called ‘The Big Book of Boy Stuff’ to the farting page. We here at Wellington City Libraries know you lot love to read about disgusting facts… So here’s the goss on farting:
Boys and Girls fart the same amount, but girls hold them in more (to be polite) so theirs are probably bigger!
Most people fart about 14 times a day! This is enough to fill a litre milk bottle! If you fart more than this then you must have super powers.
If your dog or cat has gas then you aren’t feeding it the right food. Its intestines can’t digest it properly which creates gas.
Native Alaskans enjoy a delicious dish called ‘Stinky Tail’. It’s fermented beaver tail, which is made by burying the beaver tail in a pit for weeks or even months! Ewww!
Elephants drop huge farts, but they’re usually not too smelly. Turtle farts smell the worst and Donkey farts are the loudest! But the worst farter has to be the termite; they fart constantly all day long!
Phooey!
Vile Things
You are invited to join the Churlyshes on their quest to the East Indies to search for all things vile…. The Search for Vile Things by Jane Hammerslough describes the highly bizarre, and often disgusting, but very real plants, animals, food, insects, customs and artifacts that Ephemera Churlyshe (explorer extraordinaire) found and documented on her most unusual adventure to the South Pacific. Did you know that sea apples vomit on their attachers when threatened? A cone snail’s venom is so toxic, it can kill a human in minutes and there are frogs and snakes that can fly?
How to eat a huhu grub
How to Eat a Huhu Grub by Nick Turzynski is jam packed with a lot of stuff that you never even dreamed possible, like making paper from sheep poo, extreme origami water bomb and chopstick trebuchet among others. I am sure you’ll find this book extremely helpful on a dull afternoon. How to Eat a Huhu Grub is taylor made for kiwi kids and their parents ultimate bonding activities. Check it out at the library’s children non fiction area.
Are there bugs in your bed?
Psst! It’s true! There are bugs in your bed. Blood-sucking vampires, deadly dust-dwellers, toilet terrors and things that squish, squirm and slime. Did you have any idea you were sharing your house – and maybe your bed – with monsters? In this book by Heather Catchpole and Vanessa Woods you’ll meet a hideous creature that can live for a month without its head, a beetle that blasts its victims with toxic bottom spray, weird beings that breathe through their skin, five-eyed monsters that vomit on their prey to turn them into soup, and much, much more!
Smelly Stuff
Does cold food smell stronger than hot? Do humans have a sixth sense and are cows really causing global warming? Learn the answers to all these perplexing questions and more by reading Smelly Stuff. Now you can find out how to make a particularly stinky fart and how to get rid of BO. Packed with wacky whiffy facts and quizzes, the very smelly information in this book will impress the socks off your friends – and even teach your teacher a thing or two.