This teacher and art lover is elated that this book exists. Gorgeous illustrations match well with a creative display of scientific "what ifs" to make our world more relevant and exciting to young readers. This is an excellent book for your collection, especially for homeschoolers who are comfortable with the theory of evolution.

The premise for this book is fascinating, and for the most part, author David J. Smith delivers well on that premise. There are numbers behind almost everything that we do, and in "If," Smith delves into some of those numbers and attempts to render them comprehendable, memorable, and accessible to kids. The hypothetical questions he sets out to answer in the form of hypothetical answers ("If all the money in the world was represented by 100 coins ...") create great fodder for graphical illustrations like pie and bar charts, as well as more creative visual representations of proportion and percentage. In this sense, Steve Adams' illustrations may even be the book's greatest strength, as they render those images perfectly and therefore make good on Smith's premise in ways that really count.

This is not, however, the book to teach kids *about* proportion and percentage. There are some high-concept mathematical principles which are more or less expected prerequisites to reading and enjoying this book which many junior readers below the age of eight or so will not grasp. And unfortunately, those are *exactly* the same readers to whom the illustrations will hold the greatest appeal. So it's more than a little frustrating that Smith accelerates straight into his hypotheticals without first taking the time to explain these concepts. That said, this book would make for a great supplement to elementary classrooms where those concepts are actively being taught, and so long as it is prefaced by an introduction to percentage and proportion in a more informal setting, I imagine it will go over quite well. It is, in the end, a beautiful book with a very interesting idea at its core.

Numbers sometimes will befuddle and when they are so enormous that you can't just get a hold on them, this book gives you a grasp on them. It takes those concepts and puts them down on the page (literally!) with examples and illustrations that make them simpler to understand.
Thanks to NetGalley and Kids Can Press for a digital copy in exchange for an honest review.