{"id":838,"date":"2026-06-30T22:47:50","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T22:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/?p=838"},"modified":"2026-06-30T22:49:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T22:49:46","slug":"kids-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/?p=838","title":{"rendered":"Where on Earth? &#8211; Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I read <a href=\"https:\/\/collins.co.uk\/products\/9780007186334\">this<\/a> book and thought, &#8220;Wow, that was a lot of information within a few pages!&#8221;. The book is called &#8216;Collins Big Cat &#8211; Where on Earth?&#8217; and tells about previous famous explorers who went all over the world to &#8216;discover&#8217; 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.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/9780007186334.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-841\" srcset=\"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/9780007186334.jpg 500w, https:\/\/farisismail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/9780007186334-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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 &#8216;clue&#8217; 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 &#8216;historically-inspired&#8217; shows, started to make more sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What is even more interesting is I find how the book tries to present a &#8216;neutral&#8217; 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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All in all, a recommended book, even for adults. It taught me how to explain certain things so that children will understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thank you for reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I read this book and thought, &#8220;Wow, that was a lot of information within a few pages!&#8221;. The book is called &#8216;Collins Big Cat &#8211; Where on Earth?&#8217; and tells about previous famous explorers who went all over the world to &#8216;discover&#8217; new places. As this was directed to UK readers, the explorers were mostly&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[165,39],"class_list":["post-838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-history","tag-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":843,"href":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions\/843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farisismail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}