Absolutely Everything!: A History of Earth, Dinosaurs, Rulers, Robots and Other Things Too Numerous to Mention

I saw the title and thought it has his name written all over it. He loves it.“He says he knows everything”. Well the book is holding his attention so there is more to learn.Great read put down and go back to it.

I got this for my ten year old grandson for Christmas. I didn't get much of a chance to look at it but he LOVED it! In fact his whole family loved it, parents and older siblings alike. It was easy enough for him to read and understand and engrossing enough for everyone else to enjoy.

Excellent book. Perfect balance of informative and engaging. My kids have really enjoyed the understand history in context and the interconnection of events.

Bought this for my science inclined nephew for Christmas in the hopes it would help get him excited about learning! He loved it!!

O.K., so let's pretend you're a kid. (And if you are a kid, good for you.) What do you know about things, what do you sort of know, and what do you have no idea about? If the answer is "a little, some, and a lot", then this book could be very interesting. The hook is that the book starts with the Big Bang and covers everything up to what happened yesterday. That's sort of jokey, but what does the book actually accomplish?Well, it's a bit of a bumpy ride because the author does have to keep switching gears. We start with the Big Bang, which gets once-over-easy treatment. We move on to planetary science and some cosmology. Soon enough we focus on Earth, and do plate tectonics and the like. All of this is done briskly and it seemed to me that it was so brief it worked mostly just to get some big ideas on the table. Luckily, from that start we move on to the emergence of life and move through the various geologic ages of Earth, pointing out interesting life forms, (dinosaurs!), as we go. This is more familiar territory and is very kid friendly.The book picked up more appeal and interest for me when we got to the emergence of humans and early civilizations. This is a big chunk of the book, (about a third), and falls into that broad "World Civilization" category. Africa, China and India get a lot of overdue attention before we turn our focus to Europe, and that alone recommended the book to me. Plus, once we get to the fall of Rome the book switches gears and heads to the Americas, including, amazingly, mostly South America, which never seems to get much attention in these world histories. So again, I was impressed by the range exhibited here. Now, this World Civilization part is a bit bumpy, (mostly from the picking and choosing the author had to do), and the tone varies from a bit jokey to more in depth, but it all struck me as a fairly credible attempt to touch on the big ideas - Greece, Rome, the Fertile Crescent, Persia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, major religions, the pre-Columbian Americas.A bit past the half-way mark we turn to a more traditional framework. We start with a generous nod to the intellectual accomplishments of the Muslim World, go Medieval in Europe, then skip to global exploration, revolutions in science, and then the various nations of the world at various wars between 1845 and 1945. Obviously there are some big gaps there, since the last chapter is just a pretty short treatment of the post-World War II era. The upshot, to me, is that this ended up feeling a bit like "Ancient" World Civ with a long postscript, which actually made sense on reflection.But of course the book can't really be about everything. As a world timeline that hit the early big ticket items and then surveyed events closer to the present, this actually worked pretty well. It's as evenhanded as such a project could be, and shallow in many places, but it is aimed at younger readers and seems to be intended to at least get a lot of the places, people, events and ideas that matter into a kid reader's head. On that score this worked fairly well and I wouldn't hesitate to put this into a young readers hands.Reflecting on this, I thought about all of those time/place travel chapter books like "Magic Treehouse" and "Time Warp Trio" and the like. Kids in those books are always going to Rome or Egypt or the Great Wall of China or Mayan Temples. This book strings all of that together into a coherent story and time line. If that's all an elementary school or middle grade reader gets - an annotated timeline with a worldwide range - that's quite an achievement.(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

This book was an ideal gift for a young boy who suffers from autism. He is interested in everything scientific and the book covers all sorts of things that will be of interest to him. So glad I found it!

I both this book for my 6 year old nephew whom is curious about Everything especially science and how things work and the history of stuff in general. He loves the books lots of interesting stuff in it....hours of fun facts!

Bought this for my 5 years old nephew who is very curious about everything. It certainly helps him that there are beautiful images and comprehensible words.