ReadItDaddy's Second Book of the Week - Week Ending 5th January 2018: "Impossible Inventions: Ideas that shouldn't work" by Aleksandra Mizielińska, Daniel Mizieliński and Małgorzata Mycielska (Gecko Press)

Our second Picture Book of the Week to kick off January's fantastic book roundup is another brilliant and engaging book from Messrs Mizielinski and Mizielinska, Daniel and Aleksandra, the authors of the fabulous "Maps" books...
This time they're turning their brilliant humour, awesome illustration skills and their steely eyes along with Magorzata Mycielska to the world of innovation and invention.

There have been some truly crazy ideas for new inventions throughout history. The self-cleaning toilet isn't a bad one, but the roll of loo paper strapped to a hat for cold sufferers? We'll pass on that one.

Daniel, Magorzata and Aleksandra have come up trumps with a brilliant journey through history to take a look at successful (and unsuccessful) contraptions, amazing (and not so amazing) ideas and some truly whacky inventions that have contributed to the way the world works and moves around.

Not sure I'd want to be the test rider for this thing!

Most of the really fascinating passages in this fabulously engaging books seem to revolve around the 19th Century, when the world was caught up in the fever of industrialisation and mechanisation and tried to invent many, many ways to improve machinery, transport and even the things people wore, mostly through overblown heath-robinson-esque machines that were as impractical as they were dangerous in a lot of cases.

This really is a fantastic book though, full of brilliant humour but a truly mesmerising insight into turning ideas into real-world devices and machines.

"Impossible Inventions: Ideas that shouldn't work" is out now, published by Gecko Press (kindly supplied for review).