This book was great! Full of all different sorts of facts and information. Considering it is "The Slowest Book Ever", the setup actually allows for a quick read. it has lots of slow thinking going on in our house. It has had the unfortunate side effect of causing my already intelligent and inquisitive children to be even more curious about the world around them. And just when I was getting over the "Why" phase. ( )

I love the idea of this book. I liked a lot of the content.
It had a few problems that I just couldn't overlook though. First of all, the formatting. Almost every title is meant to be read clear across two pages. But, they didn't take into account how think the books was. What I mean to say is- you can't read most of the titles.
So- for example- ...Soar for hours with just a few flaps" takes some serious book maneuvering to read.
It just looks like "....soar for hours th just a few flaps.
The other complaint that I have is that the author speaks to the audience a lot- but it SERIOUSLY threw me for a loop the first time she broke the wall.
It may have been different had she introduced herself to us- so we could imagine from the beginning that she is telling us this.
I think it was on page 34. She says "Just when you think you're being funny, you discover that someone else takes the whole thing seriously. Right after I had the thought on the previous page, I entered "snail" and "migration" into an Internet search engine. Sure enough, I found articles."
This sounds like a great story to tell someone while you are in the process of writing this book.
It was at this point that I turned to the last page to figure out what this women's credentials were. As far as I can tell, she reads science articles- and then writes science books....
I am being overly critical of this book because it is up for a Beehive Book Award in the Informational category. I think this book should be considered "fun trivia", but it's not legit enough for me to call Informational..... I want information from someone who is a professor, or works for National Geographic. Not someone who watches the news and decides to write a book about it....
I might feel differently about this book if I had just found it on a shelf and started reading.
( )

This is a unique and fascinating collection of science and inspiration. There's just one thing about it that bothers me.

This compact book with its orange, black and white color scheme quite different from anything I've read recently. It's a collection of facts and information, but more importantly it's a collection of thoughts and ideas. It's divided up into sections like "slow nature thoughts - big, chewy thoughts for your brain" and "slow geology facts - knowledge to help your forehead fossilize." There are also facts about art, space, and the final two pages are designed for you to rest your face whilst considering the thoughts presented in the book.

Back matter includes a glossary, acknowledgements (very slow acknowledgements, naturally) and final notes.

Funny asides, jokes, and quirky cartoons fill the book with humor and interest and lighten the odd facts and thought prompts.

I can see this being a great book for classroom use, discussion prompts for book clubs and car trips, or just to dip into and ponder. There's just one thing that drives me absolutely crazy. The layout. There is absolutely no gutter. In fact, parts of the words disappear into the gutter. I thought maybe the book I'd borrowed had a printing error so I tried another copy - same thing. This doesn't seem to have bothered anyone else, but it drove me insane.

See what I mean? WHERE IS THE "T"??
Verdict: A really cool book and if the weird guttering doesn't bother you, have fun with it. Personally, I'll recommend this in ebook format because the gutter issue doesn't show up there. Yes, it's very petty. It REALLY annoyed me but apparently nobody else noticed.

ISBN: 9781620917831; Published 2016 by Boyds Mills; Borrowed from another library in my consortium