The Guinness World Records fulfills its claim to ‘fascinate, stimulate, amaze, amuse, revolt and inspire you”. This best-selling hard cover has 300 glossy pages packed with interesting facts and loads of stunning colour pictures to keep educators and learners busy for hours on end. Its popularity is beyond question: the first copy of the Guinness World Records was launched in 1955 – and today sales have reached the 100-million mark.
It is a great book for parents to have at home to keep their kids amused in the school holidays and also for educators to keep in their classrooms as a reference book. The Guinness World Records can be used in just about every learning area. Topics range from silly to serious, from sport to science, from movies to music, from astronomy to animals, from disasters to diseases, from cars to crime.
The detailed index is also a useful way to teach basic research skills and have fun.
The fact that the humble banana holds the record for being the most consumed fruit in the world is indisputable and uncontroversial. But in other instances the book can be used to illustrate the concept of ideological bias for older
learners. For example, one controversial entry that caught my eye appears under the heading ‘Most people killed by an atomic bomb”. It states that, ‘On 6 August 1945, 155 200 people were killed when an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. This figure includes deaths from radiation sickness within a year of the explosion”. The text is silent on which country dropped the bomb. Nowhere is it mentioned that it was the United States government that dropped the bomb. Or that the only country in the world to have dropped nuclear bombs during war time (not one, but two!) was the US. So, as with any other book, use your critical judgment when you use it and do not just accept everything at face value. The Guinness World Records comes out annually and the latest edition is rather expensive – so look out for old editions which are often on sale at bookshops for reasonable prices (sometimes for as little as R100).
The Guinness World Records are also available at www.guinnessworldrecords.com And if you think you’ve got what it takes to join the record-holders, there are details in the book on how to go about it.