The World Book, world nugget stats for upper elementary

At work, for the past three weeks, I’ve been helping fourth and fifth-grade students craft and edit informational powerpoints. They’ve run the gamut of the usual suspects that any 10 or nine-year-old would find interesting. However, there were a couple of the students that really took the assignment one step further. These were the students that researched little-known topics that they were passionate about, as well as, those kids who were doing subjects that they simply wanted to know more about. Specifically, there was a student who writing about the history of Nintendo and one who was doing Egyptology. The World Book is a reference book that balances illustrations with elementary-aged content in a way that can provide a slightly deeper dive into countries, in addition to introducing students to new areas of Earth.

The World Book is broken up into continents, with each large landmass being further divided into the individual countries that inhabit the area. It’s done in an impressive way considering the sheer number of countries and how each one is represented. Every country has at least one page that’s devoted to four paragraphs and a couple of illustrations so that readers can get a feel for the area.

For example, the Democratic Republic of Congo starts out by saying that this country is often confused with its neighboring country to the west, the Republic of Congo. Granted, one could see how the two could be confused for one another. Older readers will recognize the shape of the commonly referred to DRC as what used to be called Zaire. The Congo River runs through it and in 1974 Muhammad Ali had Rumble in the Jungle. They speak more than 700 languages there, but French is the official one and Kinshasa is the second-largest French-speaking city in the world. If you’re looking for the Mokole Mbembe, the dinosaur that locals say roams the jungle, try the ROC. To make things even muddier, Brazzavile, the capital of ROC, is located just across the river from Kinshasa, making these two the closest capital cities in the world.

The bigger countries in the world have two pages and as a result, are doubly entertaining. Hold up, a reference book that’s entertaining? The World Book has that quality that makes Nat Geo Books so engaging, fun, and educational. The biggest difference between those two books is that the latter has photographs and a more erratic, younger vibe about it. The World Book is by no means a mature reference source that’s aimed at middle or high school students. Rather, it’s more focused, less chaotic, and, for some will be an easier source for elementary students to research papers from.

The World Book is also very thorough and doesn’t miss any tricks. One of the first questions I posed to myself was how would the book handle Taiwan or other countries that some view as territories. Kudos to the book for calling it a country, but acknowledging that China considers it part of that country. There are some legitimate territories in the world that belong to one country that’s a long distance away from said property. All of these territories are covered on one page. Also, one page is the continent of Antarctica, and that’s because it doesn’t have a permanent human population.

This is a book that’s at home in the presence of fourth or fifth graders. It’s loaded with illustrations that will keep them entertained, get them asking questions, provide a solid source for their research, widen their perspective and so much more. The World Book also ranks high on the potato chip and cat video scale. Any aged reader will try to read only one, but it’s so entertaining and fun to read, that they’ll fail miserably. However, unlike the two bases on our barometer, this won’t waste your time or add unnecessary calories. It’ll just feed the cranial sponge, provide a solid footing for their geography in middle school and do it in an effortless fashion.

The World Book: Explore the Facts, Stats and Flags of Every Country is by Joe Fullman with illustrations by Rose Blake and available on Welbeck Editions.

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