- Munroe, Randall. Thing Explainer. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2015. ISBN 978-0-544-66825-6.
-
What a great idea! The person who wrote this book explains not simple
things like red world sky cars, tiny water bags we are made of, and
the shared space house, with only the ten hundred words people use
most.
There are many pictures with words explaining each thing. The idea
came from the
Up Goer Five
picture he drew earlier.
Drawing by Randall Munroe / xkcd used under right to share but not to sell (CC BY-NC 2.5).
Many other things are explained here. You will learn about things in the house like food-heating radio boxes and boxes that clean food holders; living things like trees, bags of stuff inside you, and the tree of life; the Sun, Earth, sky, and other worlds; and even machines for burning cities and boats that go under the seas to throw them at other people. This is not just a great use of words, but something you can learn much from. There is art in explaining things in the most used ten hundred words, and this book is a fine work of that art. Read this book, then try explaining such things yourself. You can use this write checker to see how you did. Can you explain why time slows down when you go fast? Or why things jump around when you look at them very close-up? This book will make you want to try it. Enjoy! The same writer also created What If? (2015-11) Here, I have only written with the same ten hundred most used words as in the book.
(The words in the above picture are drawn. In the book they are set in sharp letters.)
