National Geographic Kids: Brain Candy, a rabbit hole of fun and learning

Our 11-year-old used to obsess over books like these from National Geographic Kids. He’d grab one from his collection and regale those in the car who were lucky enough to be near him. It didn’t matter who was in the car either. It could’ve been just the driver, his brother, or friends with him; he loved sharing those tidbits of information. National Geographic Kids Brain Candy is a square book that’s jammed with the kind of vibrant, emotive photographs that make books like these stand out from the crowd.

The book is called Brain Candy because the pages have factoids of knowledge that will make elementary school ages feel intelligent. Ironically, those same facts will make their parents or teachers think to themselves that they used to know these things and or why is it that kids are so much smarter nowadays.

Don’t feel guilty. We can’t know everything about every subject. There is seemingly no rhyme or reason behind what facts are listed in Brain Candy. The only thing that is concrete is that the facts are curious and difficult to put down.

Scorpions can go a year without eating. Olympus Mons, a mountain on Mars is three times taller than Mount Everest. The closest living relative to an elephant is the manatee. Each professional baseball is hand-stitched. The core of the Earth is believed to be as hot as the surface of the sun.

Those are just five of the irresistible facts in National Geographic Kids Brain Candy. If you multiply them by 100 then you’ll have a book full that will keep ages eight and up glued to it for a period of time. It could be a couple of minutes or possibly an hour or more. The fact that readers can come and go into any part of this book is another reason why it’s so perfect.

They’re facts that any kid that age can understand and dazzle their friends with. When our son would read this to his friends they’d try to stump each other with questions, kind of like a kid’s version of Jeopardy! We’re reading this book with our nine-year-old now before we go to bed. Each fact might lead to a question about why something is the way it is, or it could just lead to him reading a couple of pages of non-fiction, true-life facts. It has the possibility to become a rabbit hole of learning where they want to read factoids about things that just might lead to a new interest, hobby or kid-friendly fact that’ll make them more interesting.

National Geographic Kids Brain Candy retails for $8.99 and is from National Geographic Kids.

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