A blue whale is big; its the biggest animal alive. But it isn't the biggest thing there is. In this informative and engaging book, readers discover some big things, some bigger things, and the thing beyond measure--what can truly be called the Biggest Thing There Is!
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From Publishers Weekly
This raffish primer on the meaning of "big" delivers a healthy, age-appropriate jolt to common assumptions about proportion and numbers. Beginning with a blue whale's flukes ("the 'flipper' parts of the tail, all by themselves bigger than most of Earth's creatures"), Wells projects the relative sizes of Mount Everest (20 giant jars filled with 100 blue whales each), the earth, the un, the Milky Way, right out to the universe itself. Child-friendly watercolors show a bag of 100 planet earths dwarfed by the sun, and a crate of 100 "sun-sized oranges" inconsequential atop Antares, "a red supergiant star." Somewhat understandably, Wells's pictures and analogies wither as he tackles the magnitude of galaxies and the universe. To prevent readers from choking on these perceptual mouthfuls, valuable introductory and final notes suggest a relatively concrete scale: for instance, counting to a thousand takes about 12 minutes, counting to a million takes 3 weeks at 10 hours per day, but counting to a billion takes a lifetime. Ages 6-11.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From School Library Journal
Grade 2-3-With its bright primary colors; cartoon illustrations; and readable, conversational text, this picture book will find a niche in most collections. Not a story as such, it begins on the title page with the question, "Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is?" and answers it in a series of cumulative examples. Millions of blue whales placed into enormous jars and stacked up don't begin to compare to the colossal size of Mt. Everest, just as even 100 Mt. Everests piled up only make up a whisker on the face of the Earth. Taking this comparison to the outer limits of the imagination, Wells ends up with the biggest thing there is-the universe. Librarians and teachers could use this book to introduce units on size, measuring, or relativity. And it would be useful to demonstrate how to make beginning graphs in a fun, accessible way.
Jan Shephard Ross, Dixie Elementary Magnet School, Lexington, KY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Jan Shephard Ross, Dixie Elementary Magnet School, Lexington, KY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
By Brooke
Format:Paperback
This is one of my favorite books. Every class I've ever used it with, from 1st grade up to 5th, has been fascinated. The illustrations are eye catching and perfectly correspond to the text. Literature should be intergrated across the curriculum. This book can help introduce lessons on big numbers and place value. It can also be used to tie into science lessons, with the size of the solar system or animal species. All elementary classrooms should have a copy of this book. It is both educational and interesting.
Format:Paperback
Fourth graders find this book amazing when beginning a unit on the solar system. It helps them put the size of the Earth in perspective compared to the sun and other planets. I use an accompanying sheet that asks the children to number all of the objects from the book (a whale, the sun, etc..)in order according to size. Then they check their answers as I read the book aloud. It's a wonderful way to open the unit! Definitely get this book and try it!!
Format:Paperback
Fantastic book, despite the nit-picking in one of the editorial reviews above.
This book really helps little kids come to grips with the idea of relative size. My preschool and kindergarten ESL students will founder when asked to understand/believe that a little patch of color on a globe is their country (Taiwan). Heck, kids this age don't even have much idea what a country is, let alone how big it is in relation to anything else. But this book sure set some lightbulbs to poppin' over kid's heads! That's how I measure the success of my classes and the materials I use in them, and by that measure, this book is a clear winner of the Darryl Award for Excellence in Children's Literature in the Field of Science and Mathematics!
The perfect book to partner with this book is the excellent Big Blue Whale by Nicola Davies (see my review of it). The focus Ms. Davies book is the whale itself. I found that using Ms. Davies' book before Mr. Wells' worked very well indeed.
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