I had a bunch of Richard Scarry books as a child. As someone who grew up interested in engineering Scarry has these wonderful cut aways and illustrations of all sorts of everyday things.
My favorite is What Do People Do All Day. Cut aways showing pipes and cables underground with labels and colors, blue for water, green for sewage, red with white stripes for electric and blue with white stripes for telephone (might have those backwards). Homes under construction, farming and water wheel grain mill, power generation plant, road construction, even a passenger ship. Those books really stimulated the mind with those little details. And labels! Everything was labeled to tell you what that thing did or was. Some of the characters had little quips; I still remember the electrician in the house construction section standing by the fuse box/main disconnect/meter pan stating "never ever touch!"
The one thing that both infuriates and baffles me is why in gods name did they abridge What Do People Do All Day. The power station and more than I can remember is missing. My original copy was lost or destroyed, can't remember, when I was still young. When my mother went to look for another all she could find was abridged. WTF!
My favorite is What Do People Do All Day. Cut aways showing pipes and cables underground with labels and colors, blue for water, green for sewage, red with white stripes for electric and blue with white stripes for telephone (might have those backwards). Homes under construction, farming and water wheel grain mill, power generation plant, road construction, even a passenger ship. Those books really stimulated the mind with those little details. And labels! Everything was labeled to tell you what that thing did or was. Some of the characters had little quips; I still remember the electrician in the house construction section standing by the fuse box/main disconnect/meter pan stating "never ever touch!"
The one thing that both infuriates and baffles me is why in gods name did they abridge What Do People Do All Day. The power station and more than I can remember is missing. My original copy was lost or destroyed, can't remember, when I was still young. When my mother went to look for another all she could find was abridged. WTF!