Where on Earth? – Book Review

I read this book and thought, “Wow, that was a lot of information within a few pages!”. The book is called ‘Collins Big Cat – Where on Earth?’ and tells about previous famous explorers who went all over the world to ‘discover’ new places. As this was directed to UK readers, the explorers were mostly European, but I was quite surprised that Ibnu Batutta was mentioned too.

The book also presented these in a quiz form, asking the reader to guess where in the world did the explorers go, before giving a ‘clue’ by asking the readers to find the place on a grid of A1 to G4, with places like Europe being in C2, if I am not mistaken. I find this very useful because readers really had to be engaged, instead of just skimming through the places (like what I normally do when I read historical text). I find that I learned more reading the book than learning in school, since it is so compact and covers so many places. All the tidbits that I gathered from reading or watching ‘historically-inspired’ shows, started to make more sense.

What is even more interesting is I find how the book tries to present a ‘neutral’ point of view (like how the conquistadors defeated the Aztec and what the difference is between a privateer and a pirate, ha!) without dumbing down the content. For example the book mentions about Marco Polo’s story which misses much of the details of Chinese culture, that it raises the question whether he was really a traveller or one who likes to tell tall tales.

All in all, a recommended book, even for adults. It taught me how to explain certain things so that children will understand.

Thank you for reading.