Product Description

Ever wondered why we have tonsils? Is there any cream in cream crackers? Why is the sea blue? And if kangaroos keep their babies in their pouches, what happens to all the poo?! Mitch Symons answers all these crazy questions and plenty more in this wonderfully funny and addictive book for children from 8 to 80! And yes, eating bogeys is good for you...but only your own!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38452 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

About the Author
Mitchell Symons was born in 1957 in London and educated at Mill Hill School and the LSE, where he studied just enough law to get a Third. Since leaving BBC TV, where he was a researcher and then a director, he has worked as a writer, broadcaster and journalist. He was a principal writer of early editions of the board game Trivial Pursuit and has devised many television formats. Currently he writes an award-winning weekly column for the Sunday Express.

Customer Reviews

Great!
Saw this for sale the other day and noticed it was by the same author who did 'How To Avoid A Wombats Bum' which my 13 year old step-son really enjoyed reading.
He loves this one too as it's great reading for kids/teens etc, full of interesting and weird facts. Great stocking filler which the adults will also enjoy if it's left lying about on the coffee table!

if you want a bit of piece of quiet and if your sons don't like "books"!!!
Well my non-reading computer mad two boys all love this book and regularly enjoy swapping titbits they've picked up from it. Have given copies to a couple of their similarly computer-obsessed friends and I gather they have been equally well-received! Am now hoping for further titles in this series as they really seem to get my boys enthusing... Not sure about the title though! I'm old fashioned enough to think that eating bogeys is rather unpleasant. I'm sure girls will find the books juts as interesting - I juts don't happen to have any...

But ear-wax is a no-no
As a loving and above all responsible parent I felt that this was the perfect reference manual to further my two daughters' education. Having recently caught my 8 year old watching television with most of her hand up one nostril only to be withdrawn and feed the extractions into her mouth below, I felt that the title of this book was relevant, and it seemed to place an emphasis on her health too, which can only be a good thing.

The fact of the matter is, there is a lot of genuinely useful information in here. It's all in question-and-answer format, there being 310 in all, and while a lot of them are rather pointless (at least to an adult) there are many that are handy to know and a whole lot that I couldn't answer myself. For example, I read many years ago that you could fit the entire human population of the world on the Isle of Wight - is this true? The answer lies within. Why is yawning so infectious? Why is a piggy-bank so called? What is the origin of the best known word on the planet, "OK"? Why do we say that someone has been "given the sack", when they have been fired? Who was Gordon Bennett?

Most important of all of course is the (apparent) fact that bogies are indeed good for you, or at least that's the claim of an Austrian physician named Dr Friedrich Bischinger - although he stresses that any digit employed in this way needs to be thoroughly clean, and that you should only pick your own nose. Conversely, you must never consume ear-wax, not even your own; doubtless this will come as a disappointment to countless Amazon members but the said Dr Bischinger strongly advises against this pleasant pastime. My pet cat won't mind hearing this news however, as for him it's a prized delicacy and he wouldn't want to share my ear-wax with anybody.

Some of the questions are rather silly but the majority are definitely interesting and of genuine value. Suitable for quite a wide age group among children, I would say, at anything between 6 and 16.

Meanwhile, why do we have eyebrows? If you want to know, guess where the answer lies...