This is My World by Lonely Planet Kids was a delightful reading experience as 84 children from around the world tell us about their family, where they live, their hobbies and more. Each child enjoys a double page spread, and the eye-catching layouts include photos, flags, maps, fast facts and three adjectives they use to describe themselves.
Cleverly organised alphabetically by first name provides a stimulating criss-crossing of the globe instead of a dull trip alphabetically country by country. This also prevents readers from flipping pages to search for specific countries, although there is a handy index in the back.
Some of the entries are clearly written by the children while some have been helped by their parents, but all were informative, interesting and engaging. I loved learning new things along the way, for instance Noa (aged 10) lives in Japan and she says:
"I like this house because our living room is huge. There is a fireplace and horigotatsu (table-based heater) as well." Page 129I didn't know what a horigotatsu was so put the book aside to find out and went down a lovely Japanese rabbit hole. They look super cosy and I really hope I get the chance to try one some day.
I was able to identify some similarities between the entries in that a lot of children fight with their siblings (who knew?), many have never seen snow and rabbits are a favourite animal for kids around the world.
According to the Foreward:
"To create this book, we reached out to cattle ranchers in the Australian outback, inhabitants of a fishing capital in Greenland, city dwellers living among skyscrapers in Nigeria and many more families!"Sounds great but I'd really like to know exactly how they did that. How many children submitted a response and how were these 84 profiles chosen? Some of the children stated their parents were teachers and I found myself wondering if Lonely Planet reached out to schools as part of this project. Not that it's important, I'm just curious.
This is My World by Lonely Planet Kids is a great book suitable for readers young and old and I can highly recommend it.
I am a reading specialist and always looking for new ways to get my low babies to read. What an interesting book. Thanks for the review!
ReplyDeleteThanks ShellieJ, you can open this book to any page and enjoy the content so I'm sure your babies will love it!
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