I read this book last year and really wanted to share it with my kids but never got around to it. It’s a picture book written by David Smith about the world’s population. At the time this book was published it was estimated that there were 6 billion people in the world. The author makes a hard to visualize concept (6 billion people occupying the world) an easy one to understand and visualize.
I could go on but Lauran Peterson of the American Library Association says it so much more eloquently then I can “…Smith suggests that children imagine the population of the world as a village of just 100 people. That’s one person representing 62 million people in the real world. Surprising, even shocking statistics follow–for example, many kids in the U. S. take computers for granted, but only seven people in the global village own one. Each double-page, picture-book spread relates a few consciousness-raising facts about such topics as nationalities, food, language, and religion. With the aid of a calculator, even younger kids can do the math; the tricky part is to get children to really understand the ideas. Armstrong’s large acrylic paintings, nice complements to the text, look like stained glass windows, with blocks of intense color outlined in thick black lines. This highly informative book will get kids thinking and asking questions, and it can easily be incorporated into a middle-school social studies curriculum. The endnote suggests related activities for home and classroom.
Lauren Peterson Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Graciously, my hubby picked up the book from the liberary for us earlier this week. I was going to read it on the coach so both of my kiddos could see the wonderful illustrates but instead our lunch arrived and we adapted. After eating my portion I grabbed the book and read it while my kiddos finished their pizza & bread sticks. My oldest was so wrapped up in the book and stats that I had to remind me several times to “keep eating”. We read the whole book in one sitting and before clearing the table and going about our day. I asked fact questions to see if they remembered what they had been read. It’s a very intensive book filled with lots of information and I wanted to make sure we didn’t need to re-read it before venturing on. Both of my kiddos recalled many of the facts and we even discussed a few of the things from the book.
If you want to open your eyes and your children’s the what kind of people make up the world and how they live then I strongly encourge you to consider reading this book!
