#24-If The World Were a Village

If the World Were a Village: A Book About the World's People

Written by David J. Smith

Illustrated by Shelagh Armstrong

Kids Can Press, 2002

32 Pages

Non-Fiction

     This is a very informative book talking about the world population. It starts out by explaining how the world is very densely populated. It lists how many people live in the world as of January 1, 2002. After talking about how many people live in the world it breaks it down so that it is easier to understand. The book talks about the world as a village of 100 people. So every person would represent 62 million people from the real world. The book then goes on to list the different nationalities, languages, ages, and religions of this world village using the reference of the world being a village of 100 people. The book also explores issues like food, air and water, schooling and literacy, money and possessions, and electricity. It talks about how some people have more food, better air and water, money and possessions and are better educated than others. It talks about how unequally things like food and money are spread throughout the global village. The book ends by explaining how the population of the world has increased throughout history and explains problems that could develop if the word population continues to grow as rapidly as it has in the last few decades.

     Armstrong used acrylic to create the brightly colored pictures in this book. The illustrations in this book contain lots of green. Armstrong also uses lots of vibrant colors to depict the different types of people that occupy the global village. Armstrong does a great job of making the village look like it is occupied by different cultures. Each picture corresponds really well with the information that is covered in the text. The pictures are beautiful and full of variety, just like the people they represent.

     This book would be better for older children since it covers such a hard concept for children to understand. It is a great book to use to help children think about the bigger picture of the world and not just think about their town and where they have grown up. This book would be a great way to start a discussion about how there is enough food in the world to feed everyone, yet people die from starvation everyday all over the world. It would also be great to use when talking about percentages. Since the village is a village of 100 people students could easily calculate the percentages that go along with each category. Also students could try to figure out how many people of the world each number actually represents using the scale at the beginning of the book. This book would be a great way to integrate both math and social studies.