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. 

Series - The World in Infographics by Jon Richards and Ed Simkins

I don't talk about Non Fiction very often but this series has really caught my eye.  I must be a visual learner because I enjoy pouring over the infographic format as a way to present statistics and other general knowledge.

There are 12 books in this series. Topics include Planet Earth, Natural resources, Countries and Machines/Vehicles.  Each book has an index and a comprehensive glossary.  At a time when students and teachers make extensive use of 'Google' style searches I think books like this are especially useful.  Information is presented as graphs and comparisons.  In each book students can make sense of statistics and percentages and some of the content could be used for further research.

Here are a few facts from the Human World :

The Digital World
In 2010 107,000,000,000,00 emails were sent!

Staying in touch
The first call made from a mobile phone was made on 3rd April, 1973

Work Rest and Play
Annual Public Holidays - China 16, India 15, Australia 8

Dwindling resources
Years remaining of mineral reserves measured from 2011
Copper 61 years, Gold 45 Years, Tin 40 years, Phosphorus 345 Years

What a waste
New York produces 11,000 tones of trash a day or enough to cover the USA with a layer 2.5cm deep.

This page is from the Animal Kingdom.