Well I don’t know about EVERYTHING. I find it hard to believe any book could contain EVERYTHING but it does a good job of covering many aspects. The Categories are Astronomy, The Earth, Plants, Animals, The Human Body, Our History, Today’s World and The Arts. The book is full of very colourful graphics, illustrations, graphs, maps and other diagrams. There are also Timelines, mini-biographies, famous quotations, colour photographs and kid’s questions and answers.
Also, each section has a Know-It-All-News spread which shows more information on a subject in the format of of a newspaper. For example, the News page on Malaria has a story with illustrations showing how Malaria was discovered. There is a map that shows what areas of the world are affected by Malaria. There are pointers for travellers to help prevent contracting Malaria, a fake ad for Mosquit-Go, a short paragraph from the “editor” and a short question and answer session with a 9 year old with Malaria.
Unlike most Encyclopedia’s, this isn’t dull reading, nor page after page of text. The text is easy to read and broken up into small sections and the diagrams make it very interesting. I really enjoyed the quotations and information on the first page of each section. Some of my favourites are below:
“People say that time passes. Time says that people pass.” – Sanskrit Proverb (pg 115, Our History)
“When a man wants to kill a tiger, it’s called sport. When a tiger wants to kill a man, it’s called ferocity.” – George Bernard Shaw (pg. 62, Animals)
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