Mind-Numbing Numbers Made Small

If -- A Mind-Bending New Way of Looking at Big Ideas and Numbers

David J. Smith

Kids Can Press

Pub Date   Aug 1 2014

The facts and figures in “If” could easily be overwhelming if they were not scaled down to manageable and familiar size.

This book is an offshoot of the author’s previous book “If the World Were a Village” based on the popular email about the world’s population scaled down to a group of 100 people.

In this new book, the author considers everything large from planets to the wealth of the world. Each turn of the page brings a new and interesting fact made intelligible.

But sometimes the constant shifting of scales is a bit mind-numbing. For instance, in the section on planets, the Earth is considered as the size of a baseball, a grain of salt, and a grapefruit. The rubber band stretching of scales is a little bewildering in a short number of pages.

The book has a list of sources, books and web sites, but they are general -- no one fact is backed up with a direct source. Footnotes just aren’t cool I guess. Sometimes there are errors, for instance when we are told that the Hubble Space Telescope can only see 3,000 galaxies. The real number is in the billions, but this editing error made it into the first edition.

Other times the sense of scale is warped. For example, the number of species of living things is compared instead of the actual mass -- the living biomass of bacteria actually exceeds all the tonnage of plants and animals combined -- and yet the “species tree” only has 6 leaves for bacteria compared to 154 leaves for just plants.

Sometimes the charts use tricks to incorrectly imply certain stats. In the case of life expectancy shown by footprints in the sand, the length of the paths is misleading because the paths are slanted, and do not start at zero.

This book is a great place to start, and teaches an important lesson -- that big numbers and ideas can be understood by scaling. I look forward to an updated second edition with more careful fact-checking.

An Allegorical Puzzler

The Queen’s Shadow

by Cybele Young

44 pages

3/5 stars

A mystery fable about animal vision, The Queen’s Shadow is an unconventional science book. The digitally enhanced pencil drawings are in a dreary Victorian style. The not-quite-right scale and perspective remind me of a collage. One plus is the roomy double-page layout. Each animal’s special type of vision is highlighted by having the animal give an alibi to prove that it did not steal the queen’s shadow. Sidebars on each double-page use heavy jargon like “trinocular vision”, and “photoreceptors” to explain the point of view of each animal. It is not until the appendix of the book where there is a short glossary that these words and phrases are explained more fully. “Depth perception”, “compound eyes”, and even the British slang word for bathroom “loo” are tersely defined. There is also a very short guide to each animal and an explanation of human vision. The allegorical style and silly setting - a haughty queen with her court of animal nobility - makes it difficult to absorb the science. A 7 to 11 year old child would probably be better off searching for “animal vision” videos on YouTube.

Stop Dog!

Stay! A Top Dog Story
by Alex Latimer (Author, Illustrator)
 Peachtree Publishers (September 1, 2015)

A boy and his dog. And his parents. And grampa. A boy and his hilarious dog. Buster is a pip. He barks at nearly everything, chases mailmen, and is afraid of nearly nothing, except thunder and cat farts. Yes, it is that kind of book. Farts (which go “poot” as this is a British Commonwealth book), Mum’s (another Britishism) pink bra and panties, and cross-legged urges to pee.

Ben and family leave Buster the pooch behind with Grampa while they go off on vacation. Ben writes and draws copious notes on Buster’s likes and dislikes and warnings of the types of naughtiness he gets into.From the photo postcards, including one of of black-footed penguins, their motoring vacation appears to be in South Africa.

The books drawings, and Ben’s drawings are goofy, retro, and sophisticated. Advice on when to give the dog a bath includes symptoms of “the dog has changed color”, and “your eyes sting when you are near him”.

But Ben neglects to tell his Grampa about Buster’s worst habit, until it is too late. Grampa decides to take matters into his own hands and semi-successfully sets out to do something about Buster’s behavior.

This is a laugh-out-loud tale for its intended audience of grade schoolers -- with a few linguistic bumps from the UK english, it should still be a jaunty romp through a dog’s life.

Lips Quips

Random Body Parts: Gross Anatomy Riddles in Verse. by Leslie Bulion and illustrated by Mike Lowery

Dactyls, cinquains, triolets -- no these are not random body parts. They are parts of verse used in this clever concatenation of poetry, anatomy and Shakespeare.

Illustrated by a fun-loving artist, the standard grade-school body parts (stomach, teeth, tongue,lungs, skeleton, stomach) are explained in different styles of riddling poetry, all from famous speeches, soliloquies, and songs from well-known Shakespeare plays (Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar).

Some of the riddles use fancy words -- but away with Lexile, Rigby and Grade level reading charts -- the infectious rhymes and gross images will carry most interested readers along without a problem.

Not all of the organs are covered; and those which are not complain about their lack of fame in a funny sonnet (or is it an ode?) towards the end.

This “riddlanatomy” even explains some of the complex functions of the spleen, making it sound like you too might have had a shot at becoming a doctor.

There is an anatomical glossary, which suffers slightly from a lack of pronunciations; and a guide to each organ’s style of poetry and Shakespearean source play. A handful of useful web links to videos and illustrated guides, as well as an actual book as a resource round out the end-matter.

It’s hard to know what age group would most enjoy this book. Neo-Victorian riddle enthusiasts and advanced home schoolers might grasp this book at an earlier age. While some of the queries and Shakespearean material might garner readers through middle school through adulthood. A rollicking read, indeed.

Splish, Splash Rhyming Joy

The illustrator of Raindrops Fall All Around delights in adding small differences in style from page to page, and little visual departures in each picture.

For instance, one raindrop will be moving sideways, while all the others are falling down. The style of the animals change slightly too; from highly abstract bluebirds to more realistic squirrels and raccoons. One image shows faint chalk drawings being washed away on the sidewalk. It is small, interesting details like these that children notice in reading after reading.

Some drawings suggest action through tossed-off raindrops, or rivulets streaming across the page. While others use a clever double-exposure technique to show dogs wriggling off the rainwater.

The song-like poetry wends its way across the page in sinuous rilles in a cheerful typewriter-look font which hearkens back to the adult reader’s own childhood.

“Raindrops” does not meet the standard of perfection of classic writing for small children. Nor does it have that whimsicality of illustration which could really set it apart. But it is a pleasant and sincere book, and will be a favorite rainy day book for the small set.

Raindrops Fall All Around
by Charles Ghigna (Author), Laura Watson (Illustrator)
Picture Window Books $7.99 2015

Giant Squid

 Giant Squid: Searching for a Sea Monster (Smithsonian) (Paperback) Giant Squid is an exciting book: part scientific exploration, and part biography. Both the science and the biography are stimulating. You can feel the whole-hearted enthusiastic life of scientist, and co-author, Clyde Roper's 40 years as a squid hunter. So little is known about the giant squid - the sea monster of legend - because it lives almost a mile down in lightless icy waters. 50 or 60 feet in length including its two long feeding tentacles, its size is hard to imagine. Unfortunately this book never shows a simple scale diagram for reference; say a small sidebar with a sperm whale, a squid, a schoolbus and a man. And in fact, although you would expect the historic drawings to be exaggerated; so is the one modern illustration of a fight between a sperm whale and a overly large squid. The book is attractively designed with bright colors, overlaid images and backgrounds and explanatory notes placed in the image instead of as a caption. There is an excellent index, a good bibliography with up to date books for youngsters, a very short glossary and web links. The web links have a disclaimer that they are appropriate and correct at the time of printing. The book should consider using persistent web links (for example webcitations.org) which maintain a permanent archive of the web site, even if it moves, changes, or goes offline. The book's lively style, fascinating scientific facts and attractive layout make this a must for any child curious about life under the ocean.