BOOK REVIEW HOLIDAY SPECIAL SECTION : Nurturing Your Little Nerd

I had visions of books by Elaine Pagels, John Searle, Edward O. Wilson, Daniel Dennett, Stephen Jay Gould, books by eggheads read by eggheads in other fields for fun.

The books arrived.

But these aren’t egghead, I said--they’re coffee table. The heavens, the body, carnival, compendia, funny maps.

The cover of the funny map book riveted me. There, in the center of the picture bearing the blurb: “An Eccentric Map featuring towns that actually exist!” was Gravity, Iowa. Oh, sad town, to have come to this. I was born near Gravity, and on 1930s Saturday nights that people-packed, one-block main street was Bright Lights, Big City for us. Now that main street is razed. Gravity is a ghost town as forlorn as any in the West.

Several days pass by. I’m thinking, I’m thinking. I leaf through “P.T. Barnum” until I find that classic photograph of Eng and Chang, the Siamese twins, and read again the story of their death: “On January 17, 1874, to the horror of his brother, 62-year-old Chang died. Eng managed to live on for four fearful hours.” Brr. Show people die hard. Lucian Zarate was 20 inches tall and weighed only five pounds. When she was 26, she froze to death during a snowstorm in a stalled train. Young Nicolo, trapeze wonder, was lost at sea at age 11.

Who buys these books? Does anyone actually read them? All at once I understand. These are kids’ egghead books. And a kid actually would sit down and read them. With this insight, I categorized them as to age.

AGE 5 TO 8

The funny map book. A kid can learn a lot from “All Over the Map.” First, all the maps are of the 48 contiguous states, but none of the states is captioned. So a kid can go through and write in the name of each state. By the time all 33 maps are finished, this is one kid who will know the difference between Iowa and Ohio.

Even more valuable is the insight provided into categorization. Once your child understands the principle behind making such a map, then with the help of a U.S. road atlas, new maps can be made, of towns with boys’ names, girls’ names, you name it. Good for that long car trip from California back to Iowa to see Grandma.

AGE 8 TO 12

Nobody loves freaks more than kids. They’ll read every word of “P.T. Barnum,” examine every picture again and again. Just the stuff for giving pre-adolescents the horrors, and for generating desperate hypotheses about human biology.

When you notice that the pages describing “Exotic Beauties Rescued From a Sultan’s Harem” are dogeared, move to the next age bracket.

AGE 12 TO 14

Turn directly to pages 180-181 of “The Human Body Explained” for full, nude growth sequences to sexual maturity, girls and boys. But look in this book also for moods and emotions, from pain receptors to brain to tears, how blood clots, skulls and skeletons and many drawings of organs in that gory detail that 12-year-olds love.

My favorites are the drawings of food processing. When I was 12, I read “The Book of Knowledge,” with pictures of little men wheeling food in wheelbarrows down the esophagus to other little men breaking it up with pickaxes in the stomach. This book on the body is so much better than what I had as a kid, it almost makes me want to cry.

AGE 14-15:

Start with “Hubble Vision.” This is a tremendous lesson in science. The key chapter is “How the Mistake Was Made.” They shot that thing up there and it was flawed. So they figured out how to repair it and sent astronauts up to do the work floating in space. This is a great book for teaching about the trials and tribulations of technology.

Carry on with “A Journey Through Time.” You many not want your kid to be an astronomer, but these books will make or break the budding scientist.

If your child gets enough of science, move subtly on to history. “The Alphabetic Labyrinth” will direct your young scholar to the archives, not the laboratory. There’s nothing more humanistic than language, mythology, religion, history.

So I see the possibility of your young persons moving either toward science or humanities. Start them on funny maps and biology, shoot them to the stars, then hit them with the alphabet.

AGE 16-18

The editors say that besides for reference, “The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt” is meant to be read for enjoyment. Why not?

You think kids won’t read them? They will. When I was in high school, I read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. There was no television then, you say? There was radio: Jack Armstrong, Captain Midnight, the Green Hornet, Jack Benny, Fred Allen and many, many more. Listening to the radio numbed the brain and took as much time as watching TV does today. Give smart kids good books, and they’ll read them.

Finally, if your teen-ager reads in the bathroom, send along “An Incomplete Education.” It’s more than a diversion. For the college-bound, it will be an invaluable source of ideas for papers and themes. The articles can even be taken as models for use in English composition. Alas, perhaps even as more than that. Students sometimes hand papers in to me that must have come from books like this.

Whatever. These encyclopedic collections will separate developing eggheads from coffee table dilettantes.

Children of all ages will enjoy these books. If, like me, you haven’t quite grown up (did you ever hear of an egghead hatching?), you’ll enjoy reading these books. At least, during this holiday season, consider giving one to some kid. When it comes to good books, there’s as much pleasure in giving as in reading.

****

A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME: Exploring the Universe With the Hubble Space Telescope, By Jay Barbree & Martin Caidin, foreword by Sen. John H. Glenn Jr. (Penguin Studio: $29.95; 232 pp.)

AN INCOMPLETE EDUCATION, By Judy Jones and William Wilson (Ballantine Books: $30, 685 pp.)

THE DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT EGYPT, By Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, in association with the British Museum (Abrams: $45; 320 pp.)

THE WAY LIFE WORKS: Everything You Need to Know About the Way Life Grows, Develops, Reproduces, and Gets Along. By Mahon Hoagland and Bert Dodson (Times Books: $35; 233 pp.)

HUBBLE VISION: Astronomy With the Hubble Space Telescope, By Carolyn C. Petersen & John C. Brandt (Cambridge University Press: $39.95; 256 pp.)

THE HUMAN BODY EXPLAINED: An Owner’s Guide to the Incredible Living Machine, Edited by Philip Whitfield (Henry Holt: $39.95; 266 pp.)

THE ALPHABETIC LABYRINTH: The Alphabet in History, Mysticism & Imagination. By Johanna Drucker (Thames and Hudson: $45; 328 pp.)

ALL OVER THE MAP: An Extraordinary Atlas of the United States, By David Jouris (Ten Speed Press: $9.95, paperback; 96 pp.)

PT BARNUM: America’s Greatest Showman, By Philip B. Kunhardt, Philip B. Kunhardt III and Peter W. Kunhardt (Alfred A. Knopf: $45; 358 pp.)