'The best books, reviewed with insight and charm, but without compromise.'
- author Jackie French

Wednesday 10 April 2019

Review: General Knowledge Genius

Here’s a brilliant cross between an encyclopedia and a quiz book, to get kids reading, thinking and engaging with fun and obscure facts.

This book is centred around five key themes: science geek, nature know it all, geography genius, history buff and culture vulture. It intersperses intriguing facts with quizzes that challenge your knowledge of each subject area.

As with all of DK’s amazing encyclopedias, this book has a stunning visual layout with close-up photographs of nature, science, historical artefacts and human achievements. The high-quality images are balanced with digestible chunks of text and surrounded by white space so it does not appear dense.

This is a great concept for primary kids, who love reading random interesting facts but with the added incentive to learn all the answers to the quizzes so they can show off and challenge their friends!

It cleverly uses visual prompts to get kids guessing, inferring and learning by matching picture clues with answers. They are challenged to identify gemstones, birds and flowers, name bones and guess countries. There are also quizzes about famous artworks, sporting equipment and ancient weapons!

This would also be a great classroom resource. Quizzes are a fantastic way to engage kids in their learning and this book would be great discussion starter around each of the key themes.


Title: General Knowledge Genius
Publisher: DK, $24.99
Publication Date: 16 April 2019
Format: Hard Cover
ISBN: 9780241336243 
For ages: 8 - 12
Type: Non-Fiction