Grand Avenue by Mike Thompson for March 28, 2024

We had a set of encyclopedias in the 60’s, newest and updated. Years later some of the information in them was shown to be, in fact, wrong!

World Book Encyclopedia “kid” here. And then every year you had to purchase a “Year Book” which would contain updated information, especially regarding events, people and things that happened in the past year. We Boomers wrote many a book report using encyclopedias.

I recommend reading an encyclopedia or coffee table type book every night before bed. The older the better. Like counting sheep.

Next it’ll be a phone with a cord. Just think, you can’t forget where you put it!!

I too remember WRITING a lot of reports in grade school, middle school. and high school as I read through the World Book. For the heavy stuff, I had to GO to the LIBRARY to get access to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

There is just something satisfying about leafing through a print encyclopedia or even a coffee table book with a unique view of the world out there that a search engine can’t match. I heard a “Whoa, look at this!” from behind me at the library one day last year. It was from a couple of kids going through a big encyclopedia at the table. Nice.

And there are kids reading this strip who will now google encyclopedia.

And considering you still need to list several resources for your reports, having an encyclopedia to add to the list is good.

Growing up, we had two encyclopedias, World Book and Britannica. My middle brother told me that our oldest brother had read the whole encyclopedia from A-Z when he was about eight or so. I asked Alec if that was true and he said, “no big deal, it was only the World Book, not Britannica.” The really weird thing is he probably retained about 98% of what he read.