What kid won't love a book about underpants? This book is full of trivia and illustrations, but is only 23 pages long, so it could be read at story time. There are even a few extra items at the end (no pun intended).

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

3.5★
“Let’s take a peek at what tushes around the world were wearing on all seven continents!”

Kids love words and pictures and stories about underwear and bodily functions. I think that alone will ensure a market for this picture book, probably an American market, judging by the slang and jokes.

I am familiar with the word “tush” and was pretty sure it was originally Yiddish, so I looked it up. Yes, it is, originally from the Hebrew for “beneath”. I have no idea how widespread its use is in the rest of the world, or even across North America for that matter, but kids will figure it out.

The mild naughtiness may put some parents off, but the kids will love it. I’m not a fan of these particular cartoon illustrations, but I bet kids might enjoy trying to copy them. I’ll share a few to give you a good idea.

My Goodreads review includes an illustration with the caption:
Contents

The opening of the first chapter has people asking questions with highlighted words that have double meanings and will make kids giggle.

My Goodreads review includes an illustration with the caption:
“What is it about underpants that cracks us up?”

Note the plumber’s crack above the pink undies of the plumber. Kids will spot it!

The book talks about our needing to protect our “buns” since the beginning of time. I don’t know about you, but I know buns as our cheeky backside (yes, “cheeks” are mentioned), not as our tender bits, which are usually what primitive people seemed to be covering.

I also had many ‘ewwww’ moments, because I associate the word “crusty” with something unpleasant when talking about bottoms. It makes me think of some of the unpleasant surprises over the years when changing babies’ nappies (diapers).

But I assume they mean “old”, as in olden times. They do mean old. They talk about fossils and give examples from 20,000 years ago.

My Goodreads review includes an illustration with the caption:
Inuit 20,000 BCE and Ötzi, the Iceman in 3300 BCE

“Mountain climbers in the icy Alps discovered a frozen man with bits of clothing left, including his 5,300-year-old sheepskin loincloth.”

I’m surprised they didn’t mention that Ötzi was discovered only as recently as 1991, undies and all.

Some people in Europe didn’t bathe (phew!) because they thought it would make them sick! I hate to think what their clothes smelled like!

My Goodreads review includes an illustration with the caption:
Washing in Europe in the Middle Ages was no picnic by the river

Here’s a little washday tip from back then.
“Soaking clothes in ashes mixed with pee helped remove stains, brighten colors, and degrease spots.”

And here I've been worrying about how bad the clothes would smell before they were washed.

In the Americas and the Pacific, they describe the various forms of dress, but they give the dates as those when Europeans found the people, not the historic dates. Australian Aboriginal clothing is dated 1700-1900. I’m not sure what happened to the previous 60,000 years of Indigenous history, but I’d be willing to bet they covered their tender bits long before Europeans arrived!

They singled out Mahatma Gandhi for his use of clothing, or lack of, as a means of protest against British rule of India. They don’t show him sitting at his spinning wheel, but they do show him wearing his dhoti with all of his regular clothing cast off along the road.

My Goodreads review includes an illustration with the caption:
Ghandi, wearing a dhot, made from handspun fibresi

The author has also covered a few areas in Asia and Africa and later moves on to the various inventions, discoveries, and adaptations that make manufacturing easy: the cotton gin, the sewing machine, buttons and elastic. Oh, and the rediscovery of the safety pin, which apparently originated in Roman times but was patented in 1849.

I was probably told once, but didn’t remember, where the term “bloomers” came from. When I was a girl, our sports gear included bulky bloomers (which were outdated even then), so I must share Amelia with you.

My Goodreads review includes an illustration with the caption:
“Amelia Jenkins Bloomer popularized bloomers in America in 1851. Before that, women wore layers of underclothes to help protect outer clothing from sweat and body odors.”

There’s a list of further reading suggestions and a fun page for how to make your own ‘fundoshi’, which is a lighter-weight, everyday version of the extremely heavy ‘mawashi’ worn by Sumo wrestlers. The ‘mawashi’ is never washed, as it will weaken the fibres. Yuck.

“Unrolled mawashi are about as long as a school bus and as heavy as a large watermelon. When mawashi come apart during the competition, the wrestler is disqualified, and that’s a wrap.”

My Goodreads review includes an illustration with the caption:
Do it yourself fundoshi

You won’t need quite as much material, and I feel sure you are allowed to wash it.

I hope I’ve given you a sense of the tone and information in the book. It’s not a complete history, by any stretch of the imagination, and I can think of many improvements, but it’s a start, and kids will enjoy it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing’s becker&mayer! kids for the review copy from which I’ve shared a few illustrations.

Let's be honest, kids will pick up a book with underpants in the title no matter what. But luckily this one is funny and informative too!

This book was like a warm beverage for the soul. I was sucked in and could not put it down! The concept was so unique, I loved this book.

A Brief History of Underpants is an engaging and very entertaining look at underwear through the ages in many world cultures. Released 1st June 2021 from Quarto on their becker & mayer! imprint, it's 48 pages and available in paperback format.

This is such a fun and information rich look at unmentionables. The book has a simple and accessible layout with full page illustrations and inset text boxes throughout. The language is aimed at younger readers (roughly grades K-3) and will be fun for reading alone or for story-time with an adult. The illustrations are full of small details which will enrich reading time and provide lots of entertainment. Although it's humorous and tongue-in-cheek, it is factual and full of real history tidbits and actual historical people (Otzi the iceman and King Tut make brief appearances in (naturally) their underwear).

The author has included an abbreviated bibliography and links list for further reading as well as a cute short DIY tutorial to make readers' own samurai fundoshi.

This is the sort of fun and irreverent short book which will keep kids interested in reading and developing their skills and which make reading a fun activity. This would make an absolutely superlative choice for public or school library acquisition, gift giving, or the home library. Very very fun book.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

This was a fun little history of underpants. Just right for those reading small chapters. It has fun illustrations and the information is broken up into understandable tidbits for those 1st grade and up.

While the title of this book is clearly intended as a pun, brief is also an accurate descriptor. There is very little information actually here. A few interesting factoids and innovations but little about culture and what underwear can tell us.

I laughed through every page of this book. Kids (and adults) will learn lots of interesting facts and be entertained the entire time. I am excited to gift this to the elementary kids in my life.

Thank you to the author, Quarto Publishing Group and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book, and so did my godchild, who I recruited as being more directly the target group. Funny, punny and great illustrations - a very enjoyable read filled with interesting and little-known facts about history and cultural differences in terms of undergarments. Highly recommend!

This funny children's nonfiction book about the history of underpants is sure to be a hit with young readers. Fans of "Weird But True" will flock to this book. It's the perfect quick introduction to the odd, and sometimes gross, history of underpants.

An interesting concept but while I picked up some new information, it doesn’t have enough information to be truly informative, nor is it humorous enough to guarantee repeat readings.

I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love learning, so I figured why not pick this book up? Who doesn't want to learn more (potentially useless) facts about underpants? Maybe it's not the first thing you thought of this morning, but it is very interesting!

Wanna know about sumo wrestlers and King Tut? How about Europeans from the 1000s to 1500s? This book gives you so much info on underwear, it's probably one of the best resources out there. Young researchers, unite! You have found your works cited material!

The illustration style is very weird. It didn't bode well with me, but it'll work well with the intended audience. Yet, it does remind me of the old school 90s and early 2000s cartoon style, so I kind of dig it. The colour is also very nice.

Overall, this book wasn't for me and I found it kind of goofy, but that's the point!

Two out of five stars.

Thank you to Quarto Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group – becker & mayer! for the opportunity to review this book.

We had a great time reading this one, it was filled with really interesting facts about underpants as well
as funny puns and brilliant illustrations.
I didn't know what to expect going into this one but I can say I am thrilled I did as it's a wonderful one, for kids and grownups alike.

My 9 year old daughter's review:
You should read this book because it will make you laugh and the illustrations are really funny and the facts are really interesting. 5 stars

Underwear, no longer “unmentionables”, now a very funny subject. My five year old and I liked learning about underwear of the past. I enjoyed the pun-ny humor and my daughter thought the Dino in underwear was great. Four stars for me. I’d consider this a nice addition to a non-fiction library collection.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

This was a cute little book. I had hoped it would have more detail from a historical perspective, but it appears to be focused at a much younger age than I expected. Not academic, but still fun.

Review to come late april/early May to blog/goodreads/eamazon.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review!

I always love books about topics not usually getting a book. I mean, dinosaurs, bones, food, animals, those all get books and tons of them even, but how often do you see a book about underwear? Well? Indeed not often, so I had to click request.

And here we are, we learn all about underwear. From how people went from naked to wearing something (and I would indeed definitely not recommend cacti as underwear XD) to all the things people wore all over the world (I totally forgot that the Egyptian underwear was called Schenti, also NOPE on the red dye) to inventions, and more!

I had so much fun reading this book, the writing style really makes it fun to read and the puns and jokes also help! I learned a lot of new things about the various kinds of underwear and the words for them to inventions that helped with underwear. I even learned that apparently the US has a national Underpants Day! That made me laugh! I also loved seeing what famous underwear there was (eww to most though).

I loved the extra bit at the end, though I would also have liked some other special underwear to be featured (like how do those sumo wrestlers wrap themselves in their things?).

The art was terrific and fitted perfectly with the book/the silliness of it all.

So if you are curious about underwear, want something that will bring a laugh, be sure to check this book out!

This is such a silly yet informative book. I would have loved to read this as a history lesson when I was a child. I can definitely see this being super popular with kids that love Captain Underpants!

Far too brief, pun intended, this picture book about the histroy of underwear covers all sorts of things that people have warn to cover their privates.

I knew about Bloomers, who they gave more freedom of movement to women, but I didn't know some of the other facts, such as the sumo wrestler never washes his fundoshi. Bonus, you get to learn how to put on an fundoshi, just in case you have a burning desire to dress up like a sumo wrestler, and have a bold of clothe just hanging around.

I like that this book is not only about Western European clothes, but also looks at Australia, and New Zealand, Japan, India and Mali.

So, if you want to learn how many pairs of schneti were buried with King Tut, or what the Mongols wore, this is the book for you.

<em>Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.</em>

Well.... that was some colourful underwear fun!

This is a children's book and don't go to "overprotective" mode when you consider such books. It's fun to read! Of course, you will get to see so many types of underwear and the stories behind them. In brief. And yes, even dinosaurs are a part of this.

The illustrations are fun! And the colourful pages are so worth it.

The book covers the entire globe. And the mention of Gandhi was, well, unexpected. You will know why when you read this.

Have fun.

And I had more fun with the extras at the end!


Thank you Authors and the Publisher for the advance reading copy.

As an elementary school librarian, I know there are some words guaranteed to get a laugh from even the grumpiest kid. One of them is underwear. I had to read this delightfully named book and was delighted to learn it contains both silly humor and facts about the wheres, hows, and whyfors about underpants. Sure to be a big hit, this is on my to be purchased list