The Curious book of Lists by Tracey Turner and Caroline Selmes

It tells me on the cover this book contains 263 fun, fascinating and fact-filled lists.  Two hundred and sixty-three is an odd number - I guess their lists just evolved. They sure are random!

I do enjoy books like this that are filled with trivia but my Teacher-Librarian brain would have liked the list to be arranged in some sort of order. On any one page there is an assortment of unrelated lists. Here are a few examples. 

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; Cures for Hiccups; Three really big spiders; African countries; and Ancient Olympic sports.

Nobel Prize winners; Weird waterfalls; deadly snakes; Landlocked countries; and Very small cars.

Rulers with unflattering nicknames (Ivaylo the Cabbage from Bulgaria); Seven facts about cockroaches; Popular cat breeds; and Types of bears.

Luckily this book does have an index so if you have a favourite topic, you might find it on the list or you could use the index as a serendipitous way to explore this book.

Among the topics in the index that I would like to explore further I see:

• Animal astronauts
• Biggest gem stones
• Odd book titles
• Cheeses
• The meaning of flowers
• Fungai
• Hot air balloons
• Megacities
• Interesting animal names
• Sayings from around the world
• Superstitions

I borrowed this 2019 book from a library, so I am sorry to report that it is now out of print! If you can find it in your school or local library I think children who enjoy quirky facts would find this book a very absorbing one to read or dip into.

 Publisher blurb: Do you want to know about eight of the world’s deadliest snakes, forty-nine countries without a coastline and five fearless female warriors? Then look no further because The Curious Book of Lists by Tracey Turner is absolutely bursting with eye-popping and informative lists from around the world, guaranteed to keep you entertained and increase your general knowledge at the same time! Discover Ancient Greek monsters, presidential pets, dizzying mountain peaks, super-fast animals … and what not to mention at a donkey’s house.

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:

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.