A Compendium of Curious Contraptions: A Guessing Game About History's Most Unusual Artefacts - Hardcover

Goldfield, Anna; Neon Squid

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1916745032 ISBN 13: 9781916745032

Publisher: Neon Squid, 2025

Synopsis

An illustrated guide to some of the most bizarre objects from history by archaeologist Anna Goldfield, including a guessing game for kids to play!

Each page contains a mystery item from the past, with a set of clues as to what it was used for. Readers can take a guess before unfolding a giant flap to reveal the answer. Without giving too much away, the book contains Inuit snow goggles, designed to protect eyes from the blinding glare of the ice, an ancient Chinese earthquake detector featuring several metal frogs, and err.. the Royal fistula – an item used to perform delicate surgery on the rear end of King Louis XIV of France.

Kids will delight in trying to work out the purpose of the beautiful objects, brought to life by Mexican illustrator Paula Zamudio, and will learn a lot about the cultures that created them – from ancient Rome to Polynesia, and Mesopotamia to Viking Scandinavia.

About this title

About the Author

Anna Goldfield is a podcaster, science writer, illustrator, archaeologist, and creator of all sorts of content to introduce people to the study of the world around us and its past. Anna works on the kids’ science podcast Brains On! and presents the popular archaeology podcast The Dirt.

Edition details

• Publisher: Neon Squid
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1916745032
• ISBN 13: 9781916745032
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Zamudio Paula
• Number of pages: 64