Terry Denton, Terry Denton’s Really Truly Amazing Guide to Everything, Penguin, November 2020, 272pp., RRP $19.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760898922
What a great book for anyone, regardless of age and educational background, to dip in and out of or to read it from cover to cover. It’s a book that every reader will find something to marvel in, whether it be the zany and inventive cartoon illustrations and diagrams or the factual information.
This is a quick overview of the history and science of the universe, life on Earth, geology, geography and the weather, evolution, our bodies, and time. The chapter titled The World We Made focuses on inventions in their widest sense and discoveries. Many pages include a fact box of fascinating information but when analysing a page, each one is full of new material (facts!) and presented in such a way to make the reader want to find out more. Complex terminology is used, and then explained in such a way that readers can understand. Did you know about synaesthesia? It’s the ability to see colour when you hear a sound. Or the five mass extinctions the Earth has experienced? Or where you would get to if you travelled for 20 trillion (20,000,000,000,000) years? How many bacteria live in our stomach?
There’s also plenty of info about poos and farts, quantum mechanics and the meaning of life. And lots of other ‘stuff’ which kids and adults find fascinating.
I have thoroughly enjoyed browsing since my review copy arrived – many a time I’ve spent far more time doing it than I intended. If you want to know the answers to the questions I asked above, you’ll have to get hold of a copy of the book and search for yourself. There’s no index or bibliography because the book is so far-ranging that including those would make it too bulky.
Teacher notes (but not only for teachers!), including online extension reading, are available.
Highly recommended for primary and middle school readers, and for many older than this group too. In libraries, it is likely to be so well used that it will need to be replaced.
Reviewed by Maureen Mann
