Are robots cool? Yeah, robots are cool.

Are you curious, or do you want to become an expert at trivia? Look Now: The World in Facts, Stats, and Graphics is a book filled with awesome information. You probably won't ever use this information for work, or school or whatever, but that's what makes it fun to look through!

Chinese is the most spoken language, followed by Spanish, then English, Arabic, and Hindi. (Pages 72 & 73)

A chart on pages 96 & 97 shows where a country lies on a grid where how rich it is runs across the bottom and how happy it is runs up the side. They even color code the big dots to show what continent the countries are from. European countries have the biggest range of happiness and income. North America has some poor and very happy countries, too!

Interested in how citizens are being watched? Pages 134-135 will tell you that! Apparently London has 7,431 cameras watching, while Sydney, AU; Paris, FR; and San Fransisco, USA have a combined total of 493 cameras monitoring the public.

"Japan expects to have 1 million robots by 2025."

How are those for fun facts?

"Mr. and Mrs. Vinegar lived comfortably in a pickle jar."

So I chose it because the title seemed interesting, and I was trying to decide what could be interesting about this book.  What do I do to find out more about it? How about open the book!  The above quote is the first line of the story.

The writing in this story is really funny.  It starts out that Mrs. Vinegar breaks their glass pickle jar home and Mr. Vinegar says that they will go out into the world and make their fortune and "have another fine pickle jar".  Okay, so the plot is lagging, but the way Stephen Gammel writes his story is funny.  Check this last quote:

" 'Leave now?' Mrs. Vinegar replied. 'But what of our belongings?' 

Mr. Vinegar waved his hands. 'Nothing to fret about. I shall take out door and the key as well.  All will be safe upon our return.' "

I will keep that in mind: if I want to keep my belongings safe, I'll remove my door and take it with me as I run errands!

Boating Squirrels

I want to tell you about The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. 

This was a book written by Beatrix Potter and some would consider the book a classic.  A lot of people think that classic books are boring, but the illustrations are so cute and there isn't much text at all!

Check this out, this is what a whole page of text looks like:

"They made little rafts out of twigs, and they paddled away over the water to Owl Island to gather nuts.  Each squirrel had a little sack and a large oar, and spread out his tail for as sail."

What happens when you Google "Google"?

I found out something interesting today.  If you go to Google (the online search engine- that will be important later), anyway, if you go to Google and type into the search bar "do a barrel roll" the Google search results will actually rotate!  It was pretty funny to see.  Go check it out now, if you want.  But open another tab!  We don't want to lose you yet (you're a pretty cool person).

So why am I bringing up this search engine trick?  It could just be because I have a short attention span, but that's not completely true this time.  This time I want to write about The Google Book. WAIT.  Don't leave- the book is not about the search engine.  The Google Book was written by V.C. Vickers and it was published in 1979, which was waaay before Google (the search engine) was created.

 Why should you be interested?  The book is full of verses, but they're not boring like all the poetry that people try to trick you into reading.  Try this and see if you're interested:

"THE FLABBYTOES

But mark!! What is that sound I hear?

Someone in agony I fear! –

Oh no!! It is old Flabbytoes,

You can't mistake his funny nose."

Okay, you didn't really care for that?  Well, there's some pretty rad pictures, too.