Andrew Pettie & Andrés Lozano Books

This month sees another impressively comprehensive non-fiction offering from Britannica and What On Earth Books, following from Christopher’s Lloyd’s Children’s Encyclopedia and Kate Hale’s Factopia. Listified is a robust, 400-page hardback compendium brimming with intriguing information on a range of topics – each presented in list form. This is an absolute treasure trove for readers who love dipping in and out of information books and impressing their friends and family with a host of unusual trivia.

Divided into eight chapters on various themes – from space and nature to inventions and the body – the book is bursting with pocket-sized facts and snippets all grouped into lists. It’s easy to get lost in the list of animals that have visited space (although I’m sure I’m not the only one who was grateful for the footnote explaining what a Tardigrade is) or in the list of five things that scientists would need to do in order to clone a T-Rex. Many readers will be intrigued to learn that a bolt of lightning is the same width as a human thumb and five times hotter than the sun, or that on Liechtenstein’s National Day (15th August), the monarch invites the whole population for a party and funfair at the castle.

Many of the lists are just as humorous as they are informative (it’s easy to imagine that some readers will jump straight to ’10 Sounds the Body Makes and Why They Happen’ or guffaw at the section about smart underpants that can automatically measure how much your buttock muscles move in order to tell you if you need to exercise more). Coupled with Andrés Lorenzo’s appealing illustration as well as photographs, diagrams and prompts to move to other pages to find out further related information, the book takes on a playful nature without ever compromising on the density of content.

Suitable for KS2 and beyond, this is a cornucopia of information that would make a great gift for inquisitive individuals or a worthy investment for school libraries.