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Graphic from this article - http://www.toledoblade.com/Culture/2013/05/26/Largest-Reptiles-on-Earth.html

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When my daughter was three and out for a walk on an autumn day, she pointed at a spider's web and explained what it was. "Daddy, it's a website," she said.

It was a visual way to describe a word she had heard but didn't yet understand. And information graphics and visualisations give us a method to do the reverse: use images to describe a story in a way that we can understand. If children want to comprehend the world around them, infographics can do that.

There is a data revolution taking place across the globe right now. From journalism to government, the world's stories are being told through numbers and facts. But while we treat this as something that only applies to adults, it belongs to everyone. And the younger it starts, the better.

This week sees the publication of a book that I have worked on with the father of infographic design Peter Grundy - Infographics: Human body. And in April Animal Kingdom, produced with graphic designer Nicholas Blechman comes out.

So, why produce a book of infographics for children? Data is a way of tackling vagueness, something children dislike intensely. Facts are black and white, right and wrong to the average six year old. They want certainty.

"A good picture is equivalent to a good deed" said Van Gogh, and as long as we have been able to draw a line chart, designers have known that a picture can bring data to life. In 1801 William Playfair - who invented line charts and pie charts as a way to help people understand complex issues - published his Statistical Review and wrote of how important it is to make data interesting:

"Making an appeal to the eye when proportion and magnitude are concerned, is the best and readiest method of conveying a distinct idea."

But he wanted to start them young too, by imprinting data "on the mind at a time when the memory is capable of being impressed in a lasting and durable manner, thereby laying the foundation for accurate and valuable knowledge."

Peter Grundy has been explaining the world in infographics since the 1970s as one half of Grundy & Northedge. Human Body is his first work for children. "I've been trying different things for 30 years and the younger the easier," he says. "We teach ourselves to see, my belief is that we are engaged by pictures long before we learn to read and by the time we get to school our visual language is very advanced. So I feel I can be most experimental with a younger audience."

We are engaged by pictures long before we learn to read

The data is a crucial part of the work he does - this is not decoration but storytelling. "With a lot of editorial design illustration is regarded as a decorative component. As an info designer/illustrator I regard the words and pictures as one, both delivering a stronger message together."
See images from Human Body
Psychologists have known for a while that showing rather than just telling a child works. This study compared children who had been told something verbally to others who had only been shown an image. The children shown the pictures were more likely to retain that information and recall it later. "Without image, thinking is impossible," said Aristotle. Pictures work.

Alberto Cairo writes about data visualization and teaches Information Graphics and Visualization at the School of Communication at the University of Miami. He points out that understanding infographics is not innate in us - it needs to be learnt.

"You need to be taught how to read a graph before you can understand it. The only reason we take bar charts and line graphs for granted is because they are so common and we have been taught how to read them," he says. "An eye-opening experience for me was seeing that my kid was being introduced to bar and line charts at school and after that happened he started using those kinds of charts in his work."

You need to be taught how to read a graph before you can understand it

Animal Kingdom designer Nicholas Blechman says the reality of data is enticing and in contrast to the diet of fantasy that children face in their entertainment every day. "So many children's books fictionalize the world through wildly creative and inventive story telling. There is something refreshing about a book that deals with hard facts," he says.

"So much of the information is bizarre, you almost couldn't make it up (for example, Koala bears feeding poop to their young). Knowledge is power, and kids love the certainty that comes with knowing the fastest animal, or the animal with the largest brain."
See images from Animal Kingdom
It's not about dumbing down or aiming charts just at children. Designer Nigel Holmes is author of the Lonely Planet book of Everything, a visual guide to traveling the world. He says that a major factor is perhaps the most-retro aspect of a book: the paper it's printed on.

Books speak to children by "presenting them in a book (or on paper) rather than via digital media. There are too many distractions on i-devices. This doesn't mean the books should be like homework."

He pinpoints Otto Neurath and Gerd Arntz's Isotype system [http://www.gerdarntz.org/isotype] (rows of beautifully drawn little icons representing quantities of anything: money, motorbikes, corn, guns, women, men, children). "It is a terrific, friendly way to show both what the numbers are, and what the numbers are about. They can see what the subject is before they "read" the chart"

Holmes' tips for designing visuals for kids are to do it:

"By not talking down to children, just writing clearly, and by making the writing conversational (hence "talk"). By using humor. I find children understand, and love, jokes and wordplay. Many children's book editors don't believe this. My experience shows they are wrong."

About Simon Rogers

Data journalist, writer, speaker. Author of 'Facts are Sacred', from Faber & Faber and a new range of infographics for children books from Candlewick. Edited and launched the Guardian Datablog. Now works for Google in California as Data Editor

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The kids are all bright: infographics for all ages

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When my daughter was three and out for a walk on an autumn day, she pointed at a spider's web and explained what it was. "Daddy, it's a website," she said. It was a visual way to describe a word sh...

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A visualisation from the infographic book for children, Animal Kingdom book which will be published in April. Illustration by Nicholas Blechman.

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Podcasts to listen to -
Scroll to the bottom of the podcast titles
The Voyage of the Ocean Trash (from 2 minutes -- full episode 16 min)
The Secrets of Bugs and Bats - 11 min duration

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Choose 3 texts to explore with a partner. In your Reader's Notebook record:

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Choose 3 texts to explore with a partner. In your Reader's Notebook record:

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What is its structure?

What is the main idea? E.g. The use and purpose of the treadmill has changed significantly over time. They were first invented for prisoner punishment, but now they are used by choice by many people as a way to exercise and keep fit.

Does the structure change throughout the text?

Why do you think the author chose this structure?

Could this text be shown in an alternative structure? How would this change the main idea?

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The life cycle of a t-shirt - Angel Chang

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Consider the classic white t-shirt. Annually, we sell and buy 2 billion t-shirts globally, making it one of the most common garments in the world. But how and where is the average t-shirt made, and what’s its environmental impact? Angel Chang traces the life cycle of a t-shirt.

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The role of the prison is a topic of great interest to both law makers and the public. Are they meant to punish those who break the law or should they help people so they don't need to break the law again?

In the 1850s, the majority of people who broke the law were sent to prison as punishment. Depending on which prison they were sent to, prisoners could find themselves isolated for hours on end, unable to talk or interact with their fellow inmates. In other prisons, inmates would be given religious instruction and taught how to read and write. The reason for this great variation was that groups in Victorian England often disagreed about the correct way to treat England's prison population. Both agreed that the prison system needed to change, but few could agree about how to do it.

The treadmill was born out of this disagreement as a compromise between those who favored harsh punishments and those who stressed the need for reforming. The treadmill constituted ' hard labour', thereby punishing the prisoners, but it was seen to help rid the prisoners of idleness, thereby reforming their character as well.

Economic Reasons for the Treadmill

Aside from helping to reform prisoners, the treadmill also provided free labour to prison wardens. Originally the treadmill helped to crush grain, power mills or pump out water. This worked well enough in the early part of the 1800s as the English economy was still booming thanks to the early Industrial Revolution.

This all changed with the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 which caused many English laborers to lose their jobs. So dire was the employment situation that by the early 1820s it was decided that prison treadmills would no longer be allowed for business purposes thereby creating work for law abiding citizens. Whilst this decision brought many people back into the workforce, it meant that from the 1830s onwards the treadmills that prisoners spent up to 6 hours a day on were effectively pointless.

Differences between America and Great Britain

So popular was the treadmill that within 50 years of their creation treadmills could be found in over 100 prisons in across Great Britain. It wasn't long before treadmills began to pop up around the greater British Empire and not long after the treadmill found itself in the United States.

However, unlike Great Britain, the United States never really warmed to the idea of the treadmill. One of the reasons being that America had long used 'hard labour' such as cotton picking or rock breaking as a means of punishing convicts. The treadmill therefore offered little new to American prison wardens despite the fact that those who did use it, such as James Hardie, valued the treadmill quite highly. Interestingly, for a period of time slave owners in the South used the treadmill to punish runaway slaves but this was eventually stopped in favor of other forms of punishments.

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The treadmill's dark and twisted past - Conor Heffernan

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The constant thud underneath your feet. The constrained space. The monotony of going nowhere fast. Running on a treadmill can certainly feel like torture, but did you know it was originally used for that very purpose? Conor Heffernan details the dark and twisted history of the treadmill.

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Astronauts could soon be getting a slick wardrobe update. Space X founder Elon Musk has announced a new design of spacesuit that he says will work better and look better too. But what does it take to make a spacesuit?

Without them astronauts couldn't repair space stations or do experiments that help us learn more about the universe. They're spacesuits. But there's a lot more to these out-of-this-world outfits than meets the eye.

To start they have to protect astronauts from extreme heat and cold. Temperatures in space range from more than a hundred degrees below freezing to more than a hundred of degrees above. So, spacesuits come with on board air conditioning and heating. In fact, underneath it all astronauts wear underwear with pipes of flowing water to keep them extra cool and also adult nappies because spacewalks can last up to eight hours without a toilet break. Then of course comes air supply. And a gold visor provides eye protection from all the radiation above the safety of our atmosphere.

Spacesuits have to be very hardy. It might seem like there isn't much in space because there's stuff flying around like dust and small bits of debris that move at incredible speeds. So, spacesuits are made of around 11 different layers for maximum protection. All these capabilities mean spacesuits weigh a lot, from 15 to 81 kilograms. It also means they don't come cheap, they can cost millions of dollars each.

Since the earliest days of space exploration, a lot of different countries have contributed to the spacesuit evolution. Russians tested out the very first version by sending a man into space with a 20 kilogram suit way back in 1961. Soon after an American team from NASA was sent out in Mercury suits however, none of these could be worn outside. In 1965 Russian astronaut, Alexei Leonov, did the first spacewalk. But he couldn't move far from the spaceship because a long hose fed him oxygen. Four years later, the Americans were more prepared. During the Apollo Mission, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon with this cool pair of boots specially designed for the rocky lunar surface and a tank that gave him oxygen and removed the carbon dioxide he breathed out.

Since then suits have got better. But NASA is due for a new one and Space X founder, Elon Musk, says he's come up with a good option. It'll be used for journeys to the International Space Station. Mr Musk says it's more stylish than previous designs. The company even got help the 'Iron Man' costume designer. Former astronauts have already said they love the new design. But other experts aren't sure it'll be tough enough to use outside in space.

The new design should be ready by 2019 and has many people excited about travelling to places we've never seen before. While looking more stylish then we ever have.

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Astronauts could soon be getting a slick wardrobe update. Space X founder Elon Musk has announced a new design of spacesuit that he says will work better and look better too. But what does it take to make a spacesuit?

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'Interesting Facts About Fungi - Behind the News' on ViewPure

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Are they safe to eat? Are they plants, or something entirely different? We asked a fungi expert to answer some of our questions about fungi.\n\nRELATED BTN STORY\nUV Mushrooms http://www.abc.net.au/btn/story/s2916075.htm

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'Bats by Night | Wild Detectives' on ViewPure

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Go under the cover of darkness to discover what\'s up with bats.\n➡ Subscribe: http://bit.ly/NatGeoSubscribe\n\nAbout National Geographic:\nNational Geographic is the world\'s premium destination for science, exploration, and adventure.