If the World Were a Village

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I don't know that my response was quite as enthusiastic as some of my fellow reviewers (I see quite a few five and four-star reviews), but I did like it very much, and think it makes for an educational reading experience, regardless of age.

Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. I appreciated the author's note at the end of the book and I will incorporate some of his ideas about exposing our girls to a more global outlook, to increase our "world-mindedness. And the photographs further engage us: when we see photos of the tiny rooms, the beds doubling as sofas, the squalid toilets, the dark hallways – and most of all people’s faces – we can much more easily imagine what it was like to live there in that time. The sequel to "If The World Were A Village", entitled "If America Were A Village", (isbn 1554533442) was published in August, 2009. By exploring the lives of the 100 villagers, children will discover that life in other nations is often very different from their own.

Designed with kids in mind, this book does it all - relatable illustrations, captions, text features, and more. In every way this is a WOW book - the multicultural ideas, representations, the discussions with this book and the ways in which a teacher can utilize the information in the book are endless. Seventy-five people in the village have easy access to safe water; 25 spend much of the day trying to acquire it.

By taking large, almost unfathomable numbers and shrinking them to a "village" of 100, the ideas of what our global citizens experience become more manageable and easier to understand. It's also a good way for students to practice and examine real world applications of the number 100 (for younger students) or proportions and comparisons (for older students).

Smith’s information book is premised on an intriguing question: If the world’s population were represented by only 100 people in a single village, who would these people be? The visitors can be children from their own class, other classes from within the school, parents, members of staff, governors . In presenting the facts in this dispassionate manner, Smith avoids overt didacticism, although any even moderately liberal parent reading the book with a child will, justly, supply the moral gloss: Is it fair that some have so much, while others have so little? At the beginning of the school year, students draw maps of the world, and "the results are predictable," said one article about the program; "The maps always show incredible gaps in students' mental images of the world, with the only places included being the places that are real to the students -- where they live, where they've traveled.