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Big Ideas That Changed the World #7
Keep It Clean!: Big Ideas That Changed the World #7
Part of the Big Ideas That Changed the World graphic novel series, award-winning author-illustrator Don Brown explores the history of dealing with poop, pee, and dirty hands in Keep It Clean!
In 1895, an engineer named George Waring was appointed New York City’s first commissioner of street cleaning. His task? To make a city with millions of people livable.
Narrated by Waring, Keep It Clean! explores the concept of public health, which means ensuring clean water and adequate sewage disposal for everyone, and covers topics such as personal hygiene, sewer systems, and chemical water treatment. Acclaimed author-illustrator Don Brown takes readers on a journey through history and around the world, from Greek, Roman, and Aztec aqueducts and the dawn of bathing (including social public bathing in Japan and religious bathing ceremonies in Machu Picchu) to the invention of soap in the Middle East, the first use of flush toilets approximately 4,000 years ago, and the first toilets used in outer space—a Big Idea when you consider that early astronauts on Apollo 11 had none!
Full of facts and colorful historical figures, Brown chronicles both historical mishaps—like rivers full of human waste and King Henry VI’s notorious basement of poop—and monumental scientific breakthroughs including Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch’s discovery of the link between microbes (germs) and disease.
Brown also highlights how social classes became divided not only by wealth and culture but also by smell, and calls attention to modern-day health crises. Today, nearly two billion people around the world live without clean water and about 3.6 billion people—nearly half of the world’s population—live without proper sanitation. Breaking down concepts in an accessible, kid-friendly way, this nonfiction graphic novel shows why “keeping it clean” is vitally important whether it’s a city, town, home, or person.
Includes Who Was George Waring?, timeline, endnotes, and a bibliography.
Big Ideas That Changed the World is a graphic novel series that celebrates the hard-won succession of ideas that ultimately changed the world. Humor, drama, and art unite to tell the story of events, discoveries, and ingenuity over time that led humans to come up with a big idea and then make it come true.
More from the Big Ideas That Changed the World
Rocket to the Moon! (#1)
Machines That Think! (#2)
A Shot in the Arm! (#3)
We the People! (#4)
All Charged Up! (#5)
It’s About Time! (#6)
In 1895, an engineer named George Waring was appointed New York City’s first commissioner of street cleaning. His task? To make a city with millions of people livable.
Narrated by Waring, Keep It Clean! explores the concept of public health, which means ensuring clean water and adequate sewage disposal for everyone, and covers topics such as personal hygiene, sewer systems, and chemical water treatment. Acclaimed author-illustrator Don Brown takes readers on a journey through history and around the world, from Greek, Roman, and Aztec aqueducts and the dawn of bathing (including social public bathing in Japan and religious bathing ceremonies in Machu Picchu) to the invention of soap in the Middle East, the first use of flush toilets approximately 4,000 years ago, and the first toilets used in outer space—a Big Idea when you consider that early astronauts on Apollo 11 had none!
Full of facts and colorful historical figures, Brown chronicles both historical mishaps—like rivers full of human waste and King Henry VI’s notorious basement of poop—and monumental scientific breakthroughs including Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch’s discovery of the link between microbes (germs) and disease.
Brown also highlights how social classes became divided not only by wealth and culture but also by smell, and calls attention to modern-day health crises. Today, nearly two billion people around the world live without clean water and about 3.6 billion people—nearly half of the world’s population—live without proper sanitation. Breaking down concepts in an accessible, kid-friendly way, this nonfiction graphic novel shows why “keeping it clean” is vitally important whether it’s a city, town, home, or person.
Includes Who Was George Waring?, timeline, endnotes, and a bibliography.
Big Ideas That Changed the World is a graphic novel series that celebrates the hard-won succession of ideas that ultimately changed the world. Humor, drama, and art unite to tell the story of events, discoveries, and ingenuity over time that led humans to come up with a big idea and then make it come true.
More from the Big Ideas That Changed the World
Rocket to the Moon! (#1)
Machines That Think! (#2)
A Shot in the Arm! (#3)
We the People! (#4)
All Charged Up! (#5)
It’s About Time! (#6)
128 pages, Hardcover
Published October 21, 2025
12 people want to read
About the author
Don Brown
48 books149 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Don Brown is the award-winning author and illustrator of many picture book biographies. He has been widely praised for his resonant storytelling and his delicate watercolor paintings that evoke the excitement, humor, pain, and joy of lives lived with passion. School Library Journal has called him "a current pacesetter who has put the finishing touches on the standards for storyographies." He lives in New York with his family.
Don Brown is the award-winning author and illustrator of many picture book biographies. He has been widely praised for his resonant storytelling and his delicate watercolor paintings that evoke the excitement, humor, pain, and joy of lives lived with passion. School Library Journal has called him "a current pacesetter who has put the finishing touches on the standards for storyographies." He lives in New York with his family.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 19, 2025
Irreverent humor and fascinating details make this history of sanitation a fun read. It’s narrated by George Waring, who in 1895 was appointed the first commissioner of Street Cleaning in New York City. He explains how human and animal waste has been tended to (or ignored) throughout history and how, with the advent of big cities, it was essential to figure out a way to manage it. He covers body odor, bathing, the invention of soap, and the eventual association of waste accumulation with disease.
The graphic novel format allows for lots of laugh-out-loud depictions of stinky messes and the faces people would make regarding their waste. I laughed out loud at a panel showing a space shuttle leaving the moon after depositing human waste there, with the words “Goodnight Moon. Goodnight Poop.” The assured graphic art is is spare and clean, in a poopy brown and watery blue palette. Although Brown stops short of addressing what happens with sewage after disposal, he supplies so much to think about in terms of what progress has been made and what is still left to do. A multi page timeline beginning in 10,000 BCE shows the fits and starts of humans’ efforts to manage waste throughout the ages. There’s also a short biography, with a photograph, of George Waring, as well as notes, an extensive bibliography and an index. This is a really well researched non fiction graphic novel which condenses the information into a pleasing, funny and interesting treatment, perfect for motivating students who want to harness their love of all things scatalogical and learn more.
The graphic novel format allows for lots of laugh-out-loud depictions of stinky messes and the faces people would make regarding their waste. I laughed out loud at a panel showing a space shuttle leaving the moon after depositing human waste there, with the words “Goodnight Moon. Goodnight Poop.” The assured graphic art is is spare and clean, in a poopy brown and watery blue palette. Although Brown stops short of addressing what happens with sewage after disposal, he supplies so much to think about in terms of what progress has been made and what is still left to do. A multi page timeline beginning in 10,000 BCE shows the fits and starts of humans’ efforts to manage waste throughout the ages. There’s also a short biography, with a photograph, of George Waring, as well as notes, an extensive bibliography and an index. This is a really well researched non fiction graphic novel which condenses the information into a pleasing, funny and interesting treatment, perfect for motivating students who want to harness their love of all things scatalogical and learn more.
January 14, 2026
2 stars (it was okay)
It was pretty informative but it just didn't impress me as much as others in the series. The book really leans into the potty humor. There are lots of butts and butt cracks shown. The organization is a bit lacking.
I also really disliked the small font size, especially because in many places there was a huge white box for the text and the text did not fill the box. This is something I wouldn't fault an eBook for because I know the formatting of those can get all wonky but a print book shouldn't have those problems!
It was pretty informative but it just didn't impress me as much as others in the series. The book really leans into the potty humor. There are lots of butts and butt cracks shown. The organization is a bit lacking.
I also really disliked the small font size, especially because in many places there was a huge white box for the text and the text did not fill the box. This is something I wouldn't fault an eBook for because I know the formatting of those can get all wonky but a print book shouldn't have those problems!
February 23, 2026
Not a bad take on the subject. Sure there is a lot of pee and poop references, but really that is kind of the subject. They could have made different word choices, but the writing came off fairly light and inoffensive. There was a bunch of history, with good and useful descriptive art. This is actually a pretty big subject but in general this is slightly better than surface-y.
February 16, 2026
Felt a little more Western-centric than I felt appropriate (the timeline in the end felt more balanced), and the text was way too small for a NF book masquerading as a graphic novel, BUT(t) I did learn that the inventor of the u-bend for the toilet was named Thomas Crapper.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews