19th November World Toilet Day

World Toilet Day is all about celebrating toilets for everything they do for us – from taking away our waste to protecting our health, safety and dignity.

Billions of people still don’t have a safe toilet. If you’re lucky enough have one, say thanks and give it some love!

 

“Who cares about toilets? 3.6 billion people do. Because they don’t have one that works properly.“ That is the starting point of this 2021 Campaign for World Toilet Day. The Observance celebrates toilets and raises awareness of the 3.6 billion people living without access to safely managed sanitation. When some people in a community do not have safe toilets, everyone’s health is threatened. Poor sanitation contaminates drinking-water sources, rivers, beaches and food crops, spreading deadly diseases among the wider population. The solution is about taking action to tackle the global sanitation crisis and achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6: water and sanitation for all by 2030.

What can you share with students to make them think about toilets and what it would be like not to have one? Can you make it fun?

If your library has the Lonely Planet books, start with a general discussion of toilets and look at the pictures in this book.

Look at how toilets work:

• Toilet: How It Works  by David Macauley

• Toilet Tank! Their Inner Workings by Riley Flynn

• Stinking Sewers! How Does Waste Go Down by Riley Flynn

• Where Does the Poo Go? Katie Daynes and Dan Taylor

• What Happens When I Flush the Toilet? by Walter Laplante

• How Water Gets From Treatment Plants to Toilet Bowls by Megan Cooley Peterson

• Where Does My Poo Go?  by Jo Lindley

• How Does It Work? Toilets  by Nicole Brooks Bethea

Look at the history of toilets so the students know how good they have it:

• A History of Toilet Paper (and Other Potty Tools) by Sophia Gholz and Xania Teimoy

• The Great Stink: How Joseph Bazalgette Solved London's Poop Pollution Problem  by Colleen Paeff and Nancy Carpenter

• You Wouldn't Want to Live Without Toilets! by Fiona Macdonald and David Antram

• Toilets in History  by Elizabeth Newbery

Now have some fun laughing at toilets with these picture books and easy novels:

• There's a Big Green Frog in the Toilet by Ahn Do and Heath McKenzie

• There's a Troll on My Toilet by Catherine Jacob and Mike Byrne

• Who Pooed in My Loo? by Emma Adams and Mike Byrne

• Who Took the Toilet Paper?  by Amy Harrop and Jenny Cooper

• Who's in the Loo? by Jeanne Willis and Adrian Reynolds

• Don't Go There! by Jeanne Willis and Hrefna Bragadottir   

• Vesuvius Poovius by Kes Gray and Chris Mould

• There's a Spider in the Toilet by Edel Wignell and Margaret Power

Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey is a good place to find toilet books.

• Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets

• Captain Underpants and the Tyrannical Retaliation of the Turbo Toilet 2000

• There's a Dragon in My Toilet!  by Tom Nicoll and Sarah Horne

• Wigglesbottom Primary: The Toilet Ghost by Pamela Butchart and Becka Moor

Then have some fun making things with toilet rolls. There are so many craft books that focus on them.

PS. We put this display of books out early as we knew the books would be popular. Well they were all gone by the end of the day, so now we have a display that is more focussed on 'poo' and animal poo and scats predominantly. 

PSS. A child asked me where to find the books on plumbing and sewerage! What seven year old wants to know the details of sewerage?