Thing Explainer
The cover of Thing Explainer.
We here at the Small-Flying-Creatures-with-Pretty-Wings-and-Creatures-from-Other-Places-in-Space Place for Books and Information love playing with words. And we love it when other people play with words. One person whose playing-with-words we love is... named using words we can't use right now.
Let me explain.
This person wrote a book called Thing Explainer, in which he "explains how something important or interesting works, using only the ten hundred words in our language that people use the most." He also draws funny pictures and words that he shares through his all-over-the-world computer page.
As someone who often says "words matter," I really liked Thing Explainer because it made my brain work extra hard, but also made me laugh, thinking about how words maybe don't matter as much but then also thinking that, really, it shows us just how much words actually do matter, which is a lot.
I also liked it because it is a pretty book to look at, and big. Some page even get even bigger by bending out and turning into really big pages.
This page about "the pieces everything is made of" is one of the pages that turns into an even bigger page by bending out.
The book even comes with a page that bends out into a really really big page that you can pull out of the book and put up on your wall.
This picture of a "sky toucher" is the really really big page that you can pull out of the book and put up on your wall.
All the pages, big and small, have great pictures to go with the carefully picked words. Talking about things like the "shared space house", "big flat rocks we live on", and the "big tiny thing hitter", Thing Explainer shows us a different way to look at the world around us.
This part of the page about "writing sticks" shows you what all the pages kind of look like.
At the end of the book, the writer shows us the ten hundred words he uses to explain everything in Thing Explainer, which is a fun set of words to look through. But even better, the writer points us to a place on his all-over-the-world computer page that lets you try writing things with just these ten hundred words. His "Simple Writer" is how I wrote this set of words for our all-over-the-world computer page, and let me tell you it both works your brain and is a lot of fun to use.
I hope you will go out and find your own Thing Explainer so that you can also laugh at and learn from the funny and brain-working pictures and words.
Please note: the rest of these words will now have some words that are not part of the ten hundred most used words...
…
Thing Explainer is written and illustrated by Randall Munroe, creator of the xkcd.com webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Bolded words are not part of the ten hundred.
The “Shared Space House” is the International Space Station.
The "Big Flat Rocks We Live On" are the Tectonic Plates.
The "Big Tiny Thing Hitter" is the Large Hadron Collider.
You can find the xkcd Simple Writer at https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/
With an extra big thank you to Kennedy for gifting Butterflies & Aliens North with a copy of this book!
Happy reading!
– Winston
Find a copy at your friendly neighbourhood Canadian indie bookseller!
