Customer Reviews

Pick Me Up

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
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If you are someone who considers yourself an information junky then "Pick Me Up," is a book you will enjoy. It would be easy to say this is a book just for kids or teens, but Pick Me Up is a book that parents and educators will find useful and interesting as well. The full color book is so interesting and such eye candy that teens will want to close the lid on their laptops to check out this book.

The book is broken into 8 different subject areas-
Science, Technology & Space
Society, Places and Beliefs
History
The Natural World
People Who Made The World
Arts, Entertainment and media
You and your body
Planet Earth

Each content rich section includes a ton of useful information. From the planets to the country with the largest democracy, there is so much good stuff in this book, one cannot afford to let this gem pass them by. It seems as if no stone is left unturned. More than anything this is a really fun book.

If reading the almanac or Guiness Book of World Records tickles your fancy, Pick Me Up is one book facts that will keep you occupied for months to come.

In the spirit of fun learning, PICK ME UP treats kids to a fun look at the world. A reader can look up one subject, read about it, then flip to a related topic by following a bold-faced word followed by a page number. General knowledge groups are color-coded to help users locate areas of interest.

For a better idea of how this book works, I'll provide an example (page numbers subject to change).

I want to read about marine life. Under "Where to find stuff" at the beginning, I find "Oceans" under "The Natural World," color-coded light blue. I go to page 202, as listed in the finder. I read an article about how humans affect the ocean. In the article, I see "dolphins 130" in bold. I love dolphins, so I turn to that page. This brings me to "Which Animal is Man's Best Friend?" Cats, dogs, horses, elephants, rats and dolphins each get their say. I see that dogs help find "avalanche 074" victims, so now I'm curious about avalanches. I learn about Mount Kilimanjaro, how to survive an avalanche, and tectonic plates. Mountains are natural water towers, and water can be used to generate "electricity 300," so off I go to learn about electricity and magnetism... and so on.

It's easy to go on like this for hours. PICK ME UP is entertaining and educational. The value of this book is in showing kids that everything is connected. Articles don't go into great depth, but the beauty here is that these "teaser" articles will inspire kids to seek out other resources so they can learn more about it. This process is akin to learning along a random train of thought. "Oh, that looks interesting... Hey, I didn't know `x' had anything to do with `y.'" Some kids may even develop a passionate interest based on something they discover while flipping through this book.

This developing sense of interconnectivity is important in teaching kids to look at the world with a more dynamic perspective. If your kid is bored or playing too many video games, have them pick this one up. They won't admit it, but they'll enjoy every minute.

Reviewed by Christina Wantz Fixemer
11/01/2006

Gone are the days of boring, cumbersome, and, ultimately, not all that helpful encyclopedias. The new king of interesting resource information is here, and it's called PICK ME UP. Everything you've ever wanted to know about just about anything (and maybe even some stuff you didn't even know you wanted to know!) is included in the 300+ pages of this book.

Although there are eight actual categories included in PICK ME UP--Science, Technolgy, and Space; Society, Places, and Beliefs; History; The Natural World; People Who Made the World; Arts, Entertainment, and Media; You and Your Body; Planet Earth--this book is actually hard to categorize. There are numerous ways to find the information you need, from browsing one of the aforementioned categories, to cross-referencing individual pages, to using the index, or simply picking a page at random to begin your quest for knowledge.

For instance, did you know that Albert Einstein's brain was actually different in width and shape than those of us who claim to be not-so-smart geniuses? It's true! Or how about the fact that the Vikings were expert ice-skaters? Or even that a "jamon" is an entire leg of ham--the best of which comes from a pig who has been fed nothing but acorns. Seriously, I'm not making any of this up! It's all there, right in the pages of PICK ME UP.

Amazingly enough, my nearly ten-year-old son, who usually has to be tied to a chair and threatened with having his video games taken away to even look at a book, found plenty to hold his interest within the pages of PICK ME UP. Sure, he seemed to have a knack for finding the weirdest and grossest facts inside the book, but to me this was still considered an accomplishment. Take my word for it--PICK ME UP is the reference king, and you'd do well to add a copy to your home library. Who knows? You just might learn something.

Reviewed by: Jennifer Wardrip, aka "The Genius"

Just where else you find out 'Why the Roman Empire is like McDonald's.' (Answer: Both are set world domination.) And then to find two pages that talk about Rome and McDonalds comparing the two organizations. Strange but I had never thought of comparing them. Let's see, Rome had some 645,000 troops, McD's has 1.5 million employees. Hmmmm! This is beginning to make sense. Then on most pages you find a Link - a hyperlink like you have on the web, that takes you somewhere else.

And most of the pages are like this. You want to read about the Beatles, or find five places that have more sheep than people. And who were the kings and Quees of Denmark (No, Hamlet wasn't really one of them, but then again, he was a Prince.)

Anyway, that should give you the idea. This is a random, off beat, marvelous encyclopedia (I guess you'd call it). It's done like modern kids TV, short, quick and hyperlinked.

While intended for kids somewhere around the 4th to eighth grade, daddy might find it fairly fascinating as well.

David Roberts and Jeremy Leslie's Pick Me Up is a great coffee table book. Pick Me Up has many random facts that the authors claim to be necessary to know, which is only partially true. It has facts that you find yourself always looking for, but never really having a concrete place to find them. When reading this book, you will come upon a word in bold with a number after it, such as <u>China 182</u>. This means that if you wanted to know more about China, you would flip to the page number given after the word. Most books require that you read every single word on every single page. This book however is structured similarly to a dictionary. If you need a random fact, you can simply look it up, and you can skip around through the book and not have missed things that you would have if you were to read a fictional book.

Mr. Roberts and Mr. Leslie claim that these facts are necessary, but perhaps the authors are confusing 'necessary' with 'interesting'. However who said that interesting is bad? Due to the my interest in these facts, I found that I was urging myself to explore the book's pages and find out more facts about the world, animals, and Bill Gates. Congratulations to Mr. Roberts and Mr. Leslie on writing a book that keeps the reader entertained.

Hand this book to an inquisitve 8 year old and you better be prepared to have lots of interesting conversations - ones you may not be ready for!
Designed like webpages for todays internet savvy kids. Excellent idea! Excellent book!

Bought this for my 8 year old son. He has been toting it around for days, reading at the breakfast table... This is so full of fun and interesting information. Very global, very current,, very cool.

I didn't know what to expect with this book, but I was intrigued by its title and description. All I can say now is, WOW. What an ingenious idea to put references and pages within cited material so that it can easily be found! I love it! I found myself looking things up, even if I had never been interested in it before. It has great illustrations and easy to manuever around.

Any child, teen, or adult would enjoy this book!

I got this book for Christmas, and didn't like it very much at first. But when I skipped through the pages, random fun facts were all over the pages! I learned so much from this book, and the graphics are amazing! A real time-killer.

I bought this book for an 11 year old nephew and for my grade school library. My nephew reads all of the "record" and "almanac" type books and loved this one. The organization is completely different; the mix of information is eclectic and interesting. He loved it. The kids at school who read the same type of books also liked it a lot. The cover is intriguing! A really great book.