We all love infographics, right? Information chunked into digestible little bits and represented in a pictorial spread makes things easy to understand, quick to process, and draws us in by being visually catchy. They are all over the online world, but have also long been a staple of children’s non-fiction, where breaking up information into chunks has been going on for a while now. This new pair of books does a great job of making their topics accessible using this tool.
The Natural World: The World in Infographics
ISBN: 978 1 92697 374 6
Planet Earth: The World in Infographics
ISBN: 978 1 92697 375 3
by Jon Richards and Ed Simkins
OwlKids
Bright, simple, colourful spreads illustrate a host of topics in these these books about the world around us. the statistics and hard facts make them useful for school assignments and the like, as they are in fact populated with solid information, but the real joy is how accessible they make the content.
For some kids, browsing is how they read – this is often one way to get a reluctant reader to engage with a book, where they don’t have to read in a continual, linear narrative. These are the kids who love the good 
ld Guinness Book of World Records, for example. It’s not that they can’t read, it’s that they need a different kind of engagement, and this kind of material provides it perfectly, allowing them to be interested and entertained even while they are learning about the world. While this may not look like the dry non-fiction of long ago, I call that a win all around!
That’s cool – I like having this type of book for my non-reader boy, who finds reading en Francais taxing enough, and reading English for fun… just.. isn’t. GREAT picks for this age group!!