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Talk about a book with colorful pictures that even the rugby team and ordinance guys can read! This book I picked up at my local library to read with my son, and I ended up consuming the entire 170 or so page book in a single day. This is surprisingly easy to accomplish as each page has roughly 30-50 words on it, mostly taken up by illustrations.

The subtitle of this book says: ‘100 New Ways to See the natural World’, and it didn’t disappoint. I found myself ooo’ing and ahhh’ing at these maps, some left me scratching my head, others made me sad, and some made me and my kids giggle together. I’ll leave you all with some examples of mine and my kids’ favorite maps:

Where do all the turkeys live?! Spoiler alert most of them live in the United States, actually 224 million in fact! It was interesting and funny to see what countries had less than a million turkeys compared to their population, such as China having less than a million.

How people have died in National Parks- This was a fascinating breakdown of visitors to a select few national parks, and the statistics of deaths that take place at these parks. They categorize deaths by things such as swimming, automobile accidents, falling, poison, homicide, and more. There are more poisoning deaths than I would like to believe (this is separate from encounters with venomous or poisonous creatures!

70 Trees that have been to the Moon: this was actually an inspiration to do some research and post about the Moon Trees. But this shows an incomplete, but very full map of trees that went to the moon. By this, I mean they orbited the moon, and were exposed to a vacuum in space and were successfully grown on Earth. These trees span several countries and multiple states.

Mike Higgins was able to educate and entertain myself and my kids with this book. At the end of this, it met it’s goal. I was able to look at the world through a different data science-y perspective. It is sad, mind-boggling, funny, and awe inspiring, some of these maps. I would highly encourage you to purchase a copy of Wild Maps for Curious Minds here, or pick it up for free at your local library!