Me and the World: An Infographic Exploration by Mireia Trius, illustrated by Joana Casals

Me and the World: An Infographic Exploration

by Mireia Trius, illustrated by Joana Casals

Review Copy from Chronicle Books

I love learning about how other people live around the world, especially when I can do it visually, which makes Me and the World: An Infographic Exploration precisely my cup of tea! Originally published in Spanish under the title Yo y el mundo by Zahori Books, a publishing house founded by Mireia Trius, Me and the World: An Infographic Exploration benefits from the narrative of a girl, Lucia, who lives in Barcelona, Spain. Lucia's narrative naturally guides and shapes the infographics, giving readers a way in to what is sometimes a lot of information on each two page spread. Introducing herself to readers, Lucia kicks off the book with a look at the most popular names in most countries. From there, the average household size around the world is partnered with a visual showing the different family structures, based on data collected from the United States. Trius always shares the sources of her data, and when possible, the number of countries it was derived from. Me and the World: An Inforgraphic Exploration is most powerful as a way to show readers that kids all over the world have a lot in common.

To give readers perspective, infographics on population, languages spoke around the world, jobs and professions (including the cool info on "Five Jobs that Didn't Exist Before 2005) and the average house size are interspersed with infographics like cities with the most traffic, hours spent at school (and number of children around the world who are not in school) as well as hours of homework assigned, infographics about devices in the home and time spent on social media. Of course, my favorite infographics are food related: breakfast around the world, cafeteria lunches around the world, and Christmas desserts, accompanied by an infographic showing countries where Christmas is and is not a national holiday. Occasionally, infographics have more info than graphics, where some truly fascinating information is shared, like playground games around the world, ways to communicate (in ten countries) with your hands, and how to say hello in more than twenty countries. For the final spread in the book, Trius creates an infographic to show readers what some of the global information shared would look like if there were only 100 people in the world, from age to religions practiced and first languages spoken as well as literacy.

An engaging book that readers will pore over again and again.