No, you’re not a baby anymore. You can tie your shoes, comb your own hair, and nobody needs to feed you. You can even use the potty by yourself — but what happens after you do?
You’ll find out in the book “In One End and Out the Other” by Dr. Mike Goldsmith, illustrated by Richard Watson.
Just like gasoline in a car, food is fuel for your body and the first step in making that fuel is the saliva in your mouth that helps “mush up the food.”
Once you’ve finished a bite and swallowed, the “gloopy” mixture goes down your esophagus and, 10 seconds later, it enters your stomach, where it becomes something called “chyme.” Your stomach works the chyme, then sends it to your small intestines, where nutrients are absorbed and, about seven hours later, it enters your large intestines, where water is removed. After another day or so, digestion is complete and you’ll be ready to flush what’s left down the toilet.
Then what? Everything goes down a long pipe, under the ground, and into a sewer. There, it mixes with things that other people have flushed and heads to a sewage treatment plant where it gets dumped through screens into chambers and becomes sludge.
There, germs break down the sludge in the same way your body breaks down food.
At some plants, sludge gets dried and becomes food for plants, while “dirty water” is cleaned with “good bacteria” that makes it safe to put back into rivers.
With a mix of words kids feel comfortable using, and real technical and medical terms, Dr. Mike Goldsmith explains what happens from mouth to months later, not only for humans but for plants and animals as well.
This information — and the trivial bits that accompany it — is helped along by illustrations by Richard Watson, both in the main part of the book and in the fun-to-find flaps that give kids even more knowledge about the everyday function of their bodies and their cities.
Even though I’m well beyond the target age of this book (5–7), I learned a lot from it, and I think your kids undoubtedly will, too. If you’re looking for answers to st-icky questions, “In One End and Out the Other” is flush with facts.
“In One End and Out the Other,” by Dr. Mike Goldsmith [14 pages, 2015, $12.99].
Terri Schlichenmeyer has been reading since she was 3 years old, and she never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill with two dogs and 12,000 books.
