Knowledge Encyclopedia (Updated and Enlarged Edition): The World as You've Never Seen It Before (DK Knowledge Encyclopedias) Hardcover – September 16, 2013

You can easily spend weeks reading through all these pages and looking at diagrams. Very intuitive and engaging way of presenting things like the Periodic Table of elements with insets on valence electron atom structure, as just one example. I love how some pages just take a very deep dive with elaborate diagrams and cross sections of some very detailed topic and develop it, even though this is primarily a large high level overview. Organization is done very well, and I am still finding details and little anecdotes and facts noted on page headers that I missed. I really love how DK books present information, and they have done a great job not just "recycling" pictorials and diagrams from many of their other books (a very small number either similar or reused, but in different scale and developed in a very different way) so don't worry about doubling up too much on their other books (like picturepedia or space or dinosaurs) as they come at things and develop them out quite distinctly to make it worth owning all of them.

My almost 7 year old has endless questions. This book has been such a hit! We love the illustrations and the clear explanations on everything from space to animals to world history! The maps and charts (and the page of all the world’s flags!) are looked at on a near daily basis.

9 year old nephew ABSORBED by the book. Highly recommend

My son is 5 and I wanted to nurture his interest in science. He loves space and animals and this book as plenty of both. A lot of the material is over his head, but every page has a ton of illustrations that I can talk through with him. There are so many bullet points that almost anything he asks about has information for him. The range of information spans all areas and is a great way to encourage curiosity.

My 12 year old loves to wow people with off the wall facts and this is loaded

My child likes the book a lot.Parents should know that the book contains reproductive information. It is done in a scientific manor.It does contain a picture of Michelangelo's David.It also contains information about non-binary people.

As a home schooling parent these days, I wonder what the key paper books to buy might be, as opposed to just counting on the internet for all our reference.But this book has such an impressive quantity of uniformly high quality illustrations that it's a must-have.Lots of these sorts of books are cheaply edited and wind up on the bargain table at your local bookstore, along with all the other large-format picture books that grandparents give grandkids. Those books keep the kids entertained for a day. You know the type of book I mean.This book, however, is an impressive, extensive and engaging work.It's written simply in a factual, scientific tone for a smart middle schooler, high schooler or adult. It's still very useful for younger kids when accompanied by some parental explanation. My five year old loves the illustrations. They are great tools for conversational science lessons.

This book has totally changed my social life. Let me tell you a little about my background so you understand what I am talking about. When I was three my parents got divorce. 3 is when we start to expand our cognitive ability (based on the book!) and based on the book, this process could be ceased by a big sudden change, say like parents separation. As a defense mechanism system you block all the little hatch (if you will) that absorb "knowledge". Then you somehow end up creating this parallel alternative world for yourself in which you mentally live in, and let your actual flesh and bones roam the "real" world...Then you craft your own paper and you drag your own ink from your own octopus (yes thats what you pet) to write in your own language and your own arrows that leads you to the boxes that you buried in the backyard with your mom's jewelries in. You did not know what jewelry was until years later. It was too late then, the house was deconstructed along with the backyard and all the boxes were gone and she never knew who stole them little by little and no one ever knew..its still a big mystery in the family.Anyway..based on my knowledge jewelry meant nothing among many other things...took me a while(up until a few years ago) before I realize that I have to give up my own knowledge and to develop relationship with the bones and flesh.This book! oh my! saved me from myself! now I can actually talk to people and make sense. I was at this easter party a couple of days ago and I talked about germs for minutes and Danny raised his eyebrows out of impression. I think I am ready to go ahead and live in the world now. Thumbs up to SMITHSONIAN Knowledge Encyclopedia!