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. 

Steve Jenkins 1952-2022

 

Image Source: Horn Book

Hopefully if children become interested in reading about the natural world, about one kind of creature, then that opens their eyes to the possibility of thinking about other kinds of creatures. Some that aren't as immediately obvious as pandas and great white sharks.

One of the things we should encourage and celebrate in our students is curiosity.  Steve Jenkins had this in bucket loads.  His curiosity about the natural world means we are all so much richer because he wrote and illustrated so many fabulous non fiction books.

Steve did illustrate one Australian book by Mem Fox in 2019:

Over his long career, Mr. Jenkins illustrated, wrote and art-directed more than 50 books, many with Ms. Page; together they sold well over four millions copies and were translated into 19 languages, including Catalan and Farsi. He also illustrated some 40 books for other authors. Among the many awards he received was a Caldecott Honour, one of the highest honours for illustration in children’s books. New York Times

Here are some Instagram images by Steve.  Here is a 2013 interview with the Horn Book Magazine. And here is a 2008 interview with Seven Impossible Things before Breakfast. I previously talked about some books by Steve here.

Kirkus have featured so many books by Steve - you can read all the reviews here. 

The look of a Jenkins book is unmistakable: realistic cut-and-torn–paper images set on a stark white background; short informational paragraphs; a helpful section of concluding facts with a pictorial index. But the content is always an interesting surprise. Kirkus Star review Eyes

I am sure you will not be able to resist these covers. Jump onto your library catalogue and see how many wonderful books by Steve Jenkins you can find and borrow and read and marvel over!