By DK
A browse-anywhere book of answers, where each question gets its own spread and the picture does most of the explaining.
Why does it rain? What was a gladiator? Which animals build their own houses? How did that rock end up striped? Each question gets a page or a two-page spread: a short, plain answer and a lot of artwork doing the real explaining. There are cutaways, diagrams, photographs, and computer-built pictures that let you see inside things. It moves through dinosaurs, weather, the human body, rocks, ancient Rome, and space, grouped by subject, so a child who came in with one question usually finds a few more sitting right next to it.
It's the youngest and gentlest fact book on this shelf. A six-year-old who can't yet sit with a page of the thicker reference books can manage this one, because the picture carries the meaning and the words are there to fill it in. It also works differently from the random-fact books. Those give a child a lot of separate true things; this one takes a smaller set of questions and explains each answer. If your child wants the explanation more than the surprise, this is the one to reach for.