Pick Me Up, created by David Roberts and Jeremy Leslie, is a really wonderful book published by Dorling Kindersley, the same producer of the Eye Witness books. It is a modern-day encyclopedia formatted in a unique way. It is almost a stream of consciousness, helping it to serve the short attention spans of our current technology-driven generation. Its pages also hold bright visuals that the reader can feast their eyes upon as they browse through the array of pages. The catchy headlines like "Why Are We All Puppets?" and "Why Are We All So Obsessed with Celebrity Culture These Days?" grab the reader and pull them in. When I first picked this book up, I had the intention of reading one or two paragraphs and then moving onto the next thing-- before I knew it, an hour had passed and I had read about everything from relationships between males and their mothers, school structure in Japan, and why the potato is white. The 351 pages of this book are filled with everything from DNA to Democracy, Ancient China to Insects, and Rock Concerts to Teenagers. It is jam-packed with information and reminds me of a coffee-table book for kids that never runs out of new learning.
This book could be useful for teaching about specific topics or themes, for example the Ancient China unit could be used in a history lesson about Asia. This book also could serve to help engage readers who can tune out during silent reading. It offers so many opportunities to become interested and can hold almost anyone's attention. That being said, I would not recommend this book to anyone younger than about 10 years old (4th grade, maybe?). It is so packed with information that it would be overwhelming to a new reader, and covers some topics they might not even know exist, such a colonization, Nagasaki, and puberty. Although I wouldn't recommend this book to young readers, anyone over that age would be bound to love at least some part of this book. I think it might become an addition to my coffee table quite soon!
The contrast between the cover of this book and your review are really interesting! Immediately after seeing the cover, I figured it would be a comical children's book to be used in a younger classroom. Obviously, I was wrong! I think your idea of using this book as a resource for a further investigation or study is a great one! I could see it giving many of my students (4th graders) an interesting research topic. Many of my students this year happen to be fascinated by non-fiction and it sounds like this book would be a great addition!
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