The Year the Maps Changed by Danielle Binks 2 stars

[Karin]

This is the story of a year in the life of one girl, Fred/Freddie/Winnie/Winnifred, that covers both her home life and a major world event. It's set in 1998 and 1999 during a major European event I thought the home story fairly well done, but hadn't realized how political this book was (not a fan of political books).

However, I'd have given it 3 or 4 stars if it weren't for a glaring lie in the book that's not part of the changes made in history the author acknowledges. I kept reading it anyway, but was not pleased because this is so very easy to check out! I don't care if it's from a character, this book is for children and she's making a false statement that misleads things about maps that she has her character use to make statements that may or may not be correct.

First, from page 33 hardcover:
" 'Africa is often drawn to seem smaller, or roughly the same size as North America, when in fact it is [sic] the size...' "

I checked and did the math. It's more like c22 to c23 percent larger! I have no idea why AI said 30 percent because I did the math in both kilometres and miles, and due to rounding got those numbers. It depends on how one takes the measure, but you can see in the image below that Eurasia (add Europe and Asia together) is 300+ percent larger than South America.



The statement was obviously false to me the moment I read it, but it might not be for the target audience of the book.

Authors, check your facts!