Title: Me and the World: An Infographic Exploration

Written by: Mireia Trius

Illustrated by: Joana Casal

Published by: Abrams & Chronicle Books

Me and the World: An Infographic Exploration is a bright and colourful compendium of infographics that provide visual comparisons of how people live all over the world, what food they eat, their homes, favourite pastimes and ways of communicating, highlighting the differences and similarities.   The sources for the data for each spread are listed at the back of the book providing opportunities for the reader to check them for themselves.

Each double-page spread is introduced by the fictional character Lucia who comes from Spain, written by the publisher Mireia Trius. Starting with her name, family and pet Lucia moves on to talk about world population and significant cultural features such as languages, jobs, school and religion. Children can explore what life is like for Lucia in Spain compared to where they live and the rest of the world. The data is presented in interesting, visually stimulating ways which every reader can spend hours exploring.  The infographics will engage the most reluctant reader as they are able to browse the pages in any order.

It was fascinating to discover that Hong Kong has the smallest average house sizes at 45m² compared to Australia which has the largest average house size at 214m²; or to compare the different school uniforms around the world and noticing very few of them wear ties and blazers; or view age, geography and language as if here were only 100 people in the world, which really does put things in perspective.

This would be an excellent resource for introducing the study of data and statistics to Key Stage Two pupils and would also be great for discussion points in PSHE and Citizenship. It would also be a good way of introducing the use of different keys and different graphical ways data can be presented. This book provides the foundations to help children recognise how data can be manipulated by presenting it in different ways, such as changing to vertical scale to make it bigger or smaller, or skipping numbers, not starting at zero, which is an important skill in our increasingly digital world.

This book was originally reviewed for Armadillo Magazine