About the Holiday
Today’s holiday was established by Engage 2 Act – a nonprofit based in Australia whose mission is to create, nurture, and support a dynamic professional network among community groups – to encourage organizations, individuals, and businesses to better engage with their community to build strong bonds that lead to improvements for all. Before one can engage with their community, they must know, understand, and even love it. Today’s book teaches kids about their peers nearby and around the world.
Me and the World: An Infographic Exploration
Written by Mireia Trius | Illustrated by Joana Casals
Statistic are fascinating. No, really! Kids especially love knowing where they stack up in the grand scheme of things, and today’s book gives them a whole world’s worth of numbers about all kinds of things people have, do, believe, and interact with. This detailed, down-to-the-decimal compendium of facts starts out with perhaps the first thing people learn about each other: first names. From Canada to Australia and most of the countries in between, kids discover what the most popular boys’ and girls’ names have been in recent years.
With the introductions made, readers move on to another familiar topic: the family. Data from 1950 to 2015 shows the changes in family size around the globe, the average household now, and the multitude of different family structures, which includes the number of adults, children, grandparents, or other family members living together. We all love our pets no matter whether they’re dogs, cats, birds, or fish. But What is the most popular pet in each country? Kids will find out the percentages of these special friends in twelve countries. Did you know that the numbers are almost even between families that have pets and those that don’t?
Image copyright Joana Casals, 2020, text copyright Mireia Trius, 2020. Courtesy of Chronicle Books.
Kids looking toward the future know there are a lot of different jobs to choose from. The stylish graphic for Section 6 shows thirty-nine professions (is one of them your favorite?). Readers discover five jobs that didn’t exist before 2005 and statistics on what types of industries employ the most workers. Kids may be interested to know that they fall within the group that makes up the largest number: the 1.9 billion people who are between the ages of 0 and 15 and are too young to work.
Do you ramble around in a large house or elbow each other for room while brushing your teeth? An eye-opening graphic combined with fourteen different styles of homes found around the world give kids an idea of how and where their peers live. They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So, how do people around the world start their busy days? Children will be interested to find what’s on the table in seventeen countries, with descriptions of each delicious dish.
Of course, kids spend a lot of time in school, and here they get a thorough lesson in all things education, from how many hours and years children study in various countries, the kinds of uniforms they wear, and what they’re served in the cafeteria. While some aspects of school are different for kids in different regions, homework is a staple. Students will be interested to find out how many hours a week is spent on this universal requirement, and… how many hours parents spend helping their kids.
Image copyright Joana Casals, 2020, text copyright Mireia Trius, 2020. Courtesy of Chronicle Books.
And after school? How do kids spend their leisure time? Readers learn about internet time and reading habits, including the all-time ten bestselling books in the world and required reading in schools in twenty countries. Can you guess which novel US students read? There’s also sports and playground games—some that are familiar and others that readers will want to try!
When school’s out for the summer, there are vacations to take. Looking for somewhere to go? Check out the twelve most-visited cities and the top twelve museums for ideas. You can even learn some words and hand gestures to use to communicate overseas. One final chart imagines the world as a microcosm with only 100 people in it. Conceptualizing the categories of gender, age, geography, religion, first language, literacy, and urban or rural lifestyle divided into smaller numbers gives readers a simpler way to see and think about global percentages of aspects that are a large part of their lives and the lives of their peers.
Image copyright Joana Casals, 2020, text copyright Mireia Trius, 2020. Courtesy of Chronicle Books.
Author Mireia Trius begins her exploration of the world by introducing readers to Lucia and her brother Hugo, who are from Spain. Lucia opens each section with a bit about her own life. For example in Section 3: Pets, Lucia tells kids about her beagle, Vito. In Section 6: Jobs and Professions, Lucia talks about her mom who’s a veterinarian and her dad who’s a carpenter. Children will enjoy these small glimpses into Lucia and Hugo’s family life, school days, and travels as they soak up some world-wide knowledge.
Globetrotting kids will love Joana Casals’ eye-popping infographics that jump off the page and invite kids to look closer and inspect the particulars about each topic. Images of different houses, meals at home and school, school uniforms, and playground games mix with various colors and sizes of dots, books, suitcases, and taaall backpacks loaded with homework make parsing the percentages and numbers fun.
A fascinating look at the world through universal events and daily lives Me and the World: An Infographic Exploration will get kids excited about classroom and homeschooling geography, social studies and math lessons.
Ages 9 – 12
Chronicle Books, 2020 | ISBN 978-1452178875
Discover more about Mireia Trius, her books and her publishing house Zahorí here.
You can connect with Joana Casals on Instagram.
You can find Me and the World: An Infographic Exploration at these booksellers
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million
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