A Trip Through a Hands-On ‘Museum’

Zap! Whizbang! Kapowie! Snickerdoodle! Whoopie! Snurflebabaroonie!

Whew--now that I got that out of my system I feel better. Those are just a few of the words that flood my mind whenever I pick up EARTHSEARCH by John Cassidy (Klutz Press: $19.95) , one of the most entertaining--and educational--books to ever cross my desk.

Subtitled “A Kids’ Geography Museum in a Book,” this work is meant to be approached as if you were wandering through a museum. Every time you find an exhibit that appeals to you, start touching, poking, shaking, playing with the stuff that catches your interest.

And there’s a lot that will catch and hold your interest, “Earthsearch” being one of those rare books that merits a big hats-off salute to the book design/graphics/illustration team. The cover is made from recycled aluminum, which leads to a section on recycling, which offers a chance to enter the Klutz Light Metal Fiction Contest (write your own “Lives of a Pop Can” story), which leads to a discussion of dumps, which leads to the piece of toilet paper between Page 18 and Page 19 (the page with the population clock), which leads to a look at germs, population growth, maps of the world, perspective, the “Lost on Earth” game. . . .

Wait, there’s more, much more! The cutout to make a tennis ball globe, the guide to draw the knuckle ( your knuckle) contour range map, the solar system in your back yard (you’ll need a soccer ball for this), the penny game that will make you a millionaire! (maybe), the spinner game that just may make the kids appreciate all the good things that they have, the coins from eight different countries that need to find their way home.

As author Cassidy puts it, “We tried to get a full-court press here, a hands-on museum that gets away from ink-on-paper, which is fairly passive.

“I was aiming for true multimedia--kids learn through all their senses, through their ears and nose and mouth, by touching and doing. We figured if we got through to as many senses as possible, we’d be reaching them.”

“Earthsearch” took four years from conception to completion. Cassidy admits with a laugh that “I may have overcooked that one, my own little ‘Apocalypse Now.’ The printer sort of balked at first but finally came around.”

Of such obsessiveness are great books born. “Earthsearch” is a gem.

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The only “activity” you and your kids get from THEM BONES by Ian Dicks and David Hawcock (Delacorte Press: $13.95) will be the best kind: a good giggle. All you do with this simple charming piffle is pull out and fold down the skeleton while singing “thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone” and so on. And you can hang it on the wall when you’re done.