HAVE you ever wondered how plastic dinosaurs are made? Or footballs? Or crisps?

If so, then you might well be an inquisitive seven-year-old boy. We have one in our house. He started out by thinking this book was too complicated for him. And to be honest, older children would understand it more fully.

But on a second reading, he really began to get something from Transform! That's because of Slavin's step-by-step approach.

This explains how a potato becomes a crisp in seven easy steps. In fact, the real process doesn't take much longer than the time you spend reading about it: 15 minutes from raw spud to finished cheese'n'onion, apparently.

Slavin's cartoon illustrations help to further simplify complex ideas, but never to the point of superficiality.

It is slanted to a US audience, including pages on jelly beans and American footballs, but is still a fascinating insight into mass manufacture that answers a lot of questions in only 160 pages.

Updated: 15:42 Friday, March 24, 2006