Everyday Machines: Amazing Devices We Take for Granted

by John Kelly, David Burnie (Contributor), Obin (Contributor)

Explains how household appliances and common electronic equipment work, with humorous but detailed illustrations that depict the machinery being activated by teams of tiny workers

46 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Librarian's note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. This is John^^^Kelly.

John Kelly is an illustrator, writer and designer who has worked for Scholastic, Macmillan, Hodder, Simon & Schuster, Aardman animation, Lucasfilm, Radar pictures and many others. He has been shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway prize twice (Guess Who's Coming For Dinner and Scoop!). The Beastly Pirates is his first picture book for Bloomsbury.

Reviews

[Sara]

Not only is this book incredibly out of date, it is maddening to try to read to a genuinely curious child. While the illustrations of the insides of machines are really fascinating and should leave the reader with a special and intimate knowledge of the machines we use every day, they ruined those illustrations with crazy and goofy characters and applications that are not real. I cannot figure out why so much work would go into making interesting child friendly illustrations and then be thrown away by having a crew of robots sitting at drum sets, pianos and guitars inside the walkman. The interesting is made dumb and confusing. My 3 1/2 year old knows enough to know that there are not little robots in the walkman or little men having a dance party but it leaves him confused about which parts of the illustration are real and which are fictional. What a disappointment.