One Day by the Numbers by Steve Jenkins

"A lot goes on in 24 hours, from the 100,000 beats of your heart to the dozen of deadly natural disasters that take place around the world."

To show one day in numbers Steve Jenkins (1952-2021) uses charts, diagrams, graphs, and illustrations. This book is visually so interesting. It presents a myriad of facts about our world using infographics. 

Definition of the word Infographic: an infographic is a visual representation of any kind of information or data. A good infographic is worth a thousand words. Complicated scientific information can be made more accessible by using infographics. 

Here are a few fun facts (but when you grab this book these will be even more interesting because of the way Steve Jenkins presents them.

In one day:

• 12 million people fly somewhere
• 41 million trees are cut down
• In Australia each person uses 1.821 litres of water
• Lightning strikes happen some where on the earth four million times each day
• Humans blink 17000 times
• The walking record for 24 hours is 229km
• The bar-tailed godwit flies 1207km (yes that is in one day!)
• Across the world we eat 1.5 million sheep; 4 million pigs; 180 million chickens and 2 million turkeys.
• A panda eats 18kg of bamboo
• The blue whale eats 3630kg of krill

You could use this book with a class for maths or as a springboard for further research. The page on animal discoveries and extinction is one I would use. The Golden Toad from Costa Rica - extinct 2004); the Spix's Macaw from Brazil - extinct 2000; the Hawaiian tree snail - extinct 2019. Newly discovered the Olinquito from South America; and a new cave dwelling beetle found in China. I read one comment from a reviewer who found the page about our daily consumption of animals quite confronting (I did too especially the number of wild fish - 2700 million and cows).

There are other books in the series - I highly recommend these for your school library. They are small in format, paperback and quite inexpensive.  See inside one from this series here. 

Facts vs Opinions vs Robots by Michael Rex

I am constantly amazed at the ideas people have for picture books. This one is such fun! And it has robots and you probably know I slightly crazy about robots.

This book is a terrific way to explain to young children the difference between facts and opinions.

Publisher blurb: Do you know the difference between a fact and an opinion? It can be a hard thing to understand. Some things are facts–like the number of robots in this book. Other things are opinions–like which robot would make the best friend, or which robot dances best. And sometimes to tell the difference between a fact and an opinion, you need to wait to get more information–that’s because facts can be proven true or false, and opinions are things you feel and believe–but that you can’t prove. Mike Rex introduces young readers to the very important distinction between facts and opinions, and he reminds us that it is nice to listen to one another’s opinions, and to stand up for the facts!

Here is a set of teachers notes to use with this book. 

Charismatic robots populate this primer for kids growing up in an era when facts are considered debatable and opinions are oft expressed loudly and without empathy. Kirkus star review

Meet the illustrator Michael Rex. Here is a video where you can see inside this book. 

I am so excited to tell you a second book will be released next year. This was actually the topic of my final undergraduate university assignment where we designed a unit of work for a term that integrated a number of subjects and curriculum outcomes. 

The Good, the Bad and the Silly: Stories of our Past by John Dickson and Bern Emerichs

"The following 'peep holes' introduce young readers to heroes, villains, fools and plain folk on the extraordinary journey Australians have taken to arrive here in the twenty-first century"

History, well reading about history, should be fun. There are heaps of quirky, crazy, strange and slightly unbelievable stories out in the world about all periods of history.  I used to delight in talking to my students about a convict called Mansfield Silverthorpe. He could easily have been included in this book his story is so wild!  Here is his record:

Through a variety of employment in the Silk Trade, Wines and Spirits, India Rubber and Shakespearean actor, he eventually ends up jobless. Taking a notion to go to France, he ends up down to his last franc and in desperation he steals a "valuable diamond" from a museum in Boulogne. Returning to England he discovers it's a fake - when the "fence" he tries to sell it to smashes it to smithereens with a hammer. He is eventually arrested when he tries to steal a Scottish Captain's Chest. Unfortunately, making his getaway on an Omnibus with the chest he finds he is on the same coach as the Captain's butler who has been given time off to see London!  He is found guilty, sentenced to transportation for fifteen years and sent to the Hulk "Ganymede" at Woolwich. His story ends on his arrival, aged 24, at Norfolk Island. 

I wonder that I didn't discover this book in 2019 when it was published. I also wonder that this book did not appear on any CBCA notable lists. Perhaps it wasn't entered?

In The Good, the Bad and the Silly you will read about a variety of people, animals and events from our early Australian history. For example I had not heard about the dwarf emus that lived on Kangaroo and King Islands. Sadly they were all killed by seal hunters. Three were sent to France and two were placed in the gardens of Empress Josephine. When they died they were stuffed and put in a Paris museum. The makes me think of the book A giraffe for France.

Perhaps you already know the story of our platypus. Captain John Hunter "sent its pelt back to Britain. Hunter's gift was greeted with scorn. Anatomist, grave robber and body snatcher Robert Knox said it was most likely to have been cobbled together with bits of duck and beaver ... and should be included in the same category as mermaids."

Back to the emu. In Western Australia in 1932 soldiers were sent out to shoot the emus, 20,000 of them, that were eating crops. The emus were the winners with their strategy of running off in every different direction. 

You can also read about the convict Mary Wade mother of twenty one children. Former PM Kevin Rudd is one of her descendants. Harry the very unhappy camel. The rum hospital in Sydney. Hulks that were used to hold prisoners off the coast of Victoria, our first indigenous cricket team who visited England in 1868 and women winning the vote in 1902. 

I do hope this book is in your school library. It would be a wonderful resource to share with older Primary classes as a jumping off point to further research.

This is one book in a series - here are a few of the others:

Facts! One for every day of the year by Tracey Turner illustrated by Fatti Burke

 

I do enjoy books that follow this format - a poem for every day of the year; a word for every day of the year; or a fact for every day of the year.

Facts! is a book you could share in a family or in a classroom or in a school library. In the library the daily fact could be used as a jumping off point for research or for a discussion about how to approach a research topic using key words; searching for web sites with authority; and exploring ways to narrow or refine a topic search. Your class could begin their own trivia book - aiming to collect another 365 fun facts! You could also design a way to organise all of the facts your students discover over the year.

There is no index or glossary in this colourful book and that might be of concern to some librarians but the search for information on a specific topic is not the purpose of this book which is sure to delight all collectors of trivia and of course this book is perfect for fans of The Guinness Book of Records. Each double page spread covers several days and some facts, which are circled, present events on specific dates.  This is not a book to use for the topic "On this Day" but rather it is just a miscellaneous collection of facts from every discipline - science, maths, geography, astronomy, history, biology and more. 

Publisher blurb: Discover a fact for everyone, everyday, in this book. Explore a world of topics, from hilarious animals, to unbelievable-but-true science facts, mind-blowing space stats, to incredible human achievements. You can even look up what extraordinary event happened on your birthday!  Did you know that Ancient Romans used wee to whiten their teeth, and to do their laundry? Or have you heard of the parrotfish, which covers itself in a cosy, thick layer of its own slime before it goes to sleep? Why not celebrate New Year's Eve like the Estonians: tuck into seven meals to give you strength for the year ahead. Delicious.  It's most important to know that you should never shake hands with a bushbaby: the animals pee on their paws so that they leave a smelly trail wherever they go. Find out all this and much, much more, with enough facts for even the most curious reader. Also includes seasonal and 'on this day' facts for added curiosity and fun, plus a completely random mix of everything else you can imagine.

Here are a few fun facts:

• Smallest car ever produced was 140cm long, 100cm wide and 120cm high. It is called a Peel P50.
• Cockroaches can live up to a week without their heads!
• When you are eight years old your brain is already the same size as it's going to be when you are an adult.
• Tin food was invented in 1810 - 45 years before tin openers!
• There is enough iron in the human body to make a 7.5cm nail.

As suggested in the blurb I checked out my birthday - On this day in 1859 Charles Darwin's book The Origin of the Species was published. 

You can see other books illustrated by Irish illustrator Fatti Burke here. 

Here are some other books by Tracey Turner. It seems pretty clear she loves collecting facts and trivia and she loves to organise her findings:

What a Wonderful Word by Nicola Edwards and Luisa Uribe

In our Sydney Morning Herald newspaper columnist David Astle often talks about new words, invented words and words from other languages. This week he talked about a word for a plank that slides over your takeaway coffee across a counter needed in this time of social distancing. People sent in all sort of funny and insightful words such as cafeuplt; telescoffe; and jenga dispenser.

Sometimes in English we need a lot of words to explain a simple concept while other languages might have developed one, often quite powerful word, for the same thing.

Here is a sentence I created using words from What a Wonderful Word and below is a translation:

I was so happy to gokötta today. Of course it is winter here so I knew it was a gluggavedur day. I was thinking about the lady I met yesterday because my tartle was awkward. She has such pretty hair but in this time of COVID-19 I guess no one in her family can cafuné. Anyway it was so good to see my friends yesterday. After all the weeks of lock down I felt retrouvailles.

gokötta - to wake up early in the morning so you can go outside and hear the birds singing SWEDISH
gluggavedur - weather that looks beautiful while you're inside but is much too cold when you step outside ICELANDIC
tartle - to hesitate because you have forgotten someone's name SCOTS
cafuné - the act of running one's fingers through someones hair - PORTUGUESE
retrouvailles - the happiness of being reunited with someone after a long time apart. FRENCH

It's nice to know that other people have given a name to a feeling you've had: whether you've tartled at a party (hesitated when you forget a person's name) or had abbiocco because your eyes were bigger than your stomach (drowsiness after eating a big meal).  Book Trust

I am very sad to report that this book - What a Wonderful Word - appears to be out of print. It was only published in 2018. I am shaking my head that a book as wonderful as this one has had such a short life in print and therefore in bookshops - thank goodness for great libraries! In this book you will marvel at the words from around the world and you are sure to enjoy all the extra 'facts' provided on each page. I was thrilled to see one of my favourite words included - gobbledygook! And to learn about the power of simply holding hands.

Here are some other books I treasure on this topic. I especially love the book Words Borrowed from other languages. It is a large format or big book which you can share with a whole class. I often made use of it in my former school library.

The curious guide to things that aren't by John D Fixx and James F Fixx

I seem to be following a theme - here is a another quirky non fiction title filled with trivia and interesting facts.

The curious guide to things that aren't - what does this mean?  Keep reading and you will discover the subtitle says :

Things you can't always touch, see or hear - 

can you guess what they are?

This is an A to Z guide to those elusive but very real things that are all around us such as:

air
breath
cold

itch
joke
kiss

pain
quiet
reflection

x-ray
yesterday
zero

Each letter begins with a puzzle page.  Here is an example :

"This starts with the letter T.  This is always passing by, but you can't see it, stop it, or even slow it down.  When you are raking leaves, cleaning your room, or waiting for your birthday to arrive it creeps by slowly. But when you're happy or playing with friends, it flies by. .... it is measured with objects that hang on the wall, are worn on the wrist, or contained in a cell phone."

What is it?

One aspect of this book that I really loved is the way each explanation also contains usage of the word in sayings.

For TIME "you can 'save time' or 'waste time', or you can be 'ahead of time', or 'behind the times."

Here are some others I like :
"breath of fresh air"
"kiss it goodbye"
"a pain in the neck"
"at a loss for words"

You can read more about the author and listen to an interview here.  This might be another book you could use with a class exploring one letter each day and then creating you own list of things that aren't.

Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? Answers to tricky questions by Charles Hope

I loved The weird and wonderful world of words also by Charles Hope.  Here is a new book with answers to a random set of tricky questions.

When I was young one of my favourite books was called the Every Child's answer book.  It also posed the 'big questions'.  Here are some of the expected and unexpected questions you will find in this new book :

• Why don't fish die when lightning strikes the ocean?
• Why does the wind blow?
• How do giraffes drink?
• Why is the sky blue?
• Why does cutting onions make people cry?
• How much are the elements in my body worth?
• How many countries are there?
• Where is up?
• Why did Pluto stop being a planet?

This might be a good book to use with a class - you could explore one question each day and then use it as a springboard to other questions and research.

One attractive feature of this book is the way each question page is presented on a different colour. Beginning with yellow and working through all the hues right up to red and orange.

Lifetime : The amazing numbers in animal lives by Lola M Schaefer illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal

When I read a book like Lifetime I just want to rush to a teacher and beg them to use this book because there is just so much to discover here.

Lifetime is so much more than a simple counting book of even an exploration of numbers.  "Lifetime shows how many times one particular animal performs one behavior or grows one feature in a lifetime."

The book begins with a spider and her fragile egg sac. As you turn each page you will find so many fascinating facts in this book.  Did you know caribou shed 10 sets of antlers and a rattlesnake will add 40 beads to its rattle.
Every part of the animal kingdom is explored from seahorses to kangaroos, dolphins to butterflies.

The final pages are an excellent additional resource.  Lola M Schaefer explains how averages work and then explains in great detail how she arrived at the actual average she used for each creature.  For example the Red Kangaroo will birth 2 or 3 joeys every year and their lifespan is about 21.5 years. The maths of averages means after 20 years of having joeys the Red Kangaroo will have 50 joeys in her lifetime.

Here is the author web site.  We do have several of her books in our school library but I plan to add more.

A piece of string is a wonderful thing by Judy Hindley illustrated by Margaret Chamberlain

A piece of string is a wonderful thing comes from an excellent non fiction series published by Walker Books called Read and Wonder (the original cover is the one below).  We have quite a few in our library so I was excited to see this one on a book sale recently.  I think the series is now called Read and Discover and luckily many of the titles have been reprinted.

In our library we have :
All Pigs are Beautiful
Apple Green and Runner Bean
Chameleons are cool
I love Guinea Pigs
What is a wall after all?
This bowl of Earth
A ruined House

A piece of string is a wonderful thing is told as a rhyme but, as with all the books from this series, it also includes extra facts in this case about string.

"Let us sing a song about string
what a wonderful thing it is!"

No one really knows the origin of string but like all wonderful human inventions it is sure to have arisen out of necessity such as cave men needing to haul a mammoth or a line for their fishing.  As the cave men huddled in their caves they must have pondered the need for something to hold their trousers up.  "They must have said, 'Oh, a piece of string would be SUCH a fine thing to have around the cave!" You can also read about the Egyptians and their ways of making rope from flax which might then have been used as the first plumb-line and for pulling water from a well.

This book is a joy to read aloud and has lively illustrations by Margaret Chamberlain.  She is the illustrator of The man whose mother was a pirate by Margaret Mahy.

There is so much to talk about with this book and it certainly would lead to some fun string projects. You might also like to look for these books about string.  The end papers show ancient and modern uses of string - so many ideas to explore.  Here are some further ideas.

When I think about rope I think of this quote I like to use with my senior students when we begin our discussions about Multiculturalism.  This comes from an old book in our library called Australopedia which was published in 1988.

"Like the strands of a rope, which woven together make a whole that is stronger than its parts, the different kinds of people in Australia make a country which has more variety, energy, imagination and strength because of all the backgrounds and ideas which are combined together as the Australia people."