this book is about the amazing and unbelievable things that people do. ( )

My son LOVED this book (he's 15). "Cool stuff" (his words). ( )

Behold, probably one of the finest collections of strange, interesting, colorfully presented, and jaw-dropping facts around today. I spent a weekend looking through this book with my boyfriend (both of us are self-proclaimed nerds for collections of fun facts) and we couldn’t get enough of the short, weird blurbs and pretty pictures.

SEEING IS BELIEVING! is organized into sections of particular interests. There are chapters for facts relating to people, natural phenomena, technology, the animal kingdom, and more. If you’re an equal-opportunity science lover like me, no page is more or less interesting than the other: all are colorful, well-designed, and frightfully interesting. When I took breaks from reading it with my boyfriend to do some schoolwork, every his frequent cries of fascination or horror would inexorably draw me back to read whatever cool page he was on.

This book is not one you can read in one sitting, and indeed you would not want to. Instead, it’s perfect for the occasional browse, for when you have five minutes to open to a random page and devour it. My boyfriend loved that it was a perfect read for those with a short attention span, as you’re never pressured to read the facts in a particular order or amount to understand what it’s about.

My one complaint regards the construction of the book. While I was reading, the white “binding strip” that’s supposed to be located in the spine kept on sliding out, to my frustration. Whether or not this is an anomaly, I do not know, and I think that the book’s intended audience—fact-loving kids or science nerds—will not mind.

Overall, SEEING IS BELIEVING! is an ideal thirty-dollar Christmas or birthday present for the kid who begs for a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records each year it’s printed. (And, uh, yeah, while I didn’t beg, I certainly didn’t mind getting it for a present!) Its color, layout, and carefully selected thousands of crazy facts will be sure to shock and impress anyone who dares to look beyond the cool holographic blinking eye on the cover. ( )