How Does My Home Work? by Chris Butterworth

This engaging picture book explains in simple terms the complex system that makes a house “work”

How Does My Home Work? by Chris Butterworth, illustrated by Lucia Gaggiotti.  Candlewick, 2017, 26 pages

Reading Level: Picture books, ages 4-8

Recommended for: ages 4-8

We all take for granted things like light switches, running water, and instant heat—and we have for a very long time.  How many of us grownups stop to think where it all comes from?  Children probably think even less about all that, but here’s a book to help the curious (and even the incurious) be a little more appreciative.  For children not quite ready for David McCauley’s The Way Things Work, this is a handy guide to the nuts and bolts of everyday living.  Originally published in the UK, the book includes English spellings and an environmentalist slant, but the text is plainspoken and the pictures full of detail.  The opening pages, picturing a cutaway view of a house, will have readers flipping back and forth while making comparisons.

Cautions: none

Overall rating: 3.75 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic value: 4