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If: A Mind-Bending New Way of Looking at Big Ideas and Numbers by David Smith

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Summary: 
Author David J. Smith has found clever devices to scale down everything from time lines (the history of Earth compressed into one year), to quantities (all the wealth in the world divided into one hundred coins), to size differences (the planets shown as different types of balls). Accompanying each description is a kid-friendly drawing by illustrator Steve Adams that visually reinforces the concept. By simply reducing everything to human scale,

Attention Span/reading level: Ages 10+ - to really understand this book you have to have some what of a concept of a space, time lines, and quantities and the things the author compares them too. 
Good uses for book in teaching: Science, history, quantities,

Favorite part: Mine; A few of the pages I found really interesting were about the size of the continents, number of species of living things, energy, and life expectancy. 

Least favorite part: None.

 Warnings/negative feedback: A few pages mention evolution and the development of life on earth as well as earth's creation/history. Each family will need to consider their views of these events as compared to the way they are described. I still feel that the book as a whole and these pages have value, even if I didn't totally agree with the way some things were phrased. 

Review: The author provides a very interesting way to understand large scale concepts. Many of the illustrations also give a great way to see the concepts described. I enjoyed seeing many of the descriptions and learned many things I didn't know, such as the pages on money distribution, life expectancy, and food production vs consumption.  

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