Absolutely Everything!

For Kids - An Ambitious Timeline of Historical Highlights

O.K., so let's pretend you're a kid. (And if you are a kid, good for you.) What do you know about things, what do you sort of know, and what do you have no idea about? If the answer is "a little, some, and a lot", then this book could be very interesting. The hook is that the book starts with the Big Bang and covers everything up to what happened yesterday. That's sort of jokey, but what does the book actually accomplish?

Well, it's a bit of a bumpy ride because the author does have to keep switching gears. We start with the Big Bang, which gets once-over-easy treatment. We move on to planetary science and some cosmology. Soon enough we focus on Earth, and do plate tectonics and the like. All of this is done briskly and it seemed to me that it was so brief it worked mostly just to get some big ideas on the table. Luckily, from that start we move on to the emergence of life and move through the various geologic ages of Earth, pointing out interesting life forms, (dinosaurs!), as we go. This is more familiar territory and is very kid friendly.

The book picked up more appeal and interest for me when we got to the emergence of humans and early civilizations. This is a big chunk of the book, (about a third), and falls into that broad "World Civilization" category.  Africa, China and India get a lot of overdue attention before we turn our focus to Europe, and that alone recommended the book to me. Plus, once we get to the fall of Rome the book switches gears and heads to the Americas, including, amazingly, mostly South America, which never seems to get much attention in these world histories. So again, I was impressed by the range exhibited here. Now, this World Civilization part is a bit bumpy, (mostly from the picking and choosing the author had to do), and the tone varies from a bit jokey to more in depth, but it all struck me as a fairly credible attempt to touch on the big ideas - Greece, Rome, the Fertile Crescent, Persia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley,  major religions, the pre-Columbian Americas.

A bit past the half-way mark we turn to a more traditional framework. We start with a generous nod to the intellectual accomplishments of the Muslim World, go Medieval in Europe, then skip to global exploration, revolutions in science, and then the various nations of the world at various wars between 1845 and 1945. Obviously there are some big gaps there, since the last chapter is just a pretty short treatment of the post-World War II era. The upshot, to me, is that this ended up feeling a bit like "Ancient" World Civ with a long postscript, which actually made sense on reflection. 

But of course the book can't really be about everything. As a world timeline that hit the early big ticket items and then surveyed events closer to the present, this actually worked pretty well. It's as evenhanded as such a project could be, and shallow in many places, but it is aimed at younger readers and seems to be intended to at least get a lot of the places, people, events and ideas that matter into a kid reader's head.  On that score this worked fairly well and I wouldn't hesitate to put this into a young readers hands.

Reflecting on this, I thought about all of those time/place travel chapter books like "Magic Treehouse" and "Time Warp Trio" and the like. Kids in those books are always going to Rome or Egypt or the Great Wall of China or Mayan Temples. This book strings all of that together into a coherent story and time line. If that's all an elementary school or middle grade reader gets - an annotated timeline with a worldwide range - that's quite an achievement.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

The history of the world from the Big Bang to today is covered in ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING!, a brilliant new book with beautiful illustrations geared to middle grade readers. Author Christopher Lloyd includes a lot of material in this 352-page compendium, chock full of intriguing stories on how the earth came to be, the history of wars, climates, animals, cultures, inventions, and so much more. You name it, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING! has the answer. 5/5

Thanks to the author, Myrick Marketing & Media, LLC and NetGalley for the review copy, in exchange for my true opinions.

#WhatonEarth #NetGalley

Lloyd's book is aptly titled as Absolutely Everything is included in this children's encyclopedia. Beginning with the Big Bang and ending with modern social history that promotes the need for learning and understanding history, Lloyd left no major advancement or achievement untouched. The selected events felt balanced and the images and graphics brought many topics to life. This book would be perfect in any student's bedroom.

Thank you NetGalley and What on Earth Books for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy.

My 10-year old son devoured this book from cover to cover in two days and repeated facts for week's afterward. What a fun, educational book! We loved it!