Learning: Encyclopedias for Kids

Never have so many parents trembled at the salesman’s glib pitch that knowledge is the key to happiness and that their children will not even find the door without an encyclopedia. Sales of encyclopedias written for school kids have at least tripled in the past ten years. Educators agree that an encyclopedia can aid learning, but only if it has something significant to say in clear words and pictures that appeal to a child — and only a few sets really do that.

The best are The World Book En cyclopedia, which has dominated the grade-school market in recent years, Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia and Britannica Junior Encyclopaedia. Those three now face strong competition from the New Book of Knowledge, which Grolier, Inc., has just completed after spending nine years and $7,000,000. It retains only the name of Grolier’s famed earlier set, which was designed more for broad-subject browsing than for detailed, focused information.

Enticing Openings. The prices range from Book of Knowledge’s $199.50 for a 20-volume set to World Book’s $183.30 for 20 volumes, Compton’s $179.50 for 15 volumes and Britannica Junior’s $149.50 for 15 volumes. All tend to emphasize subjects found in school curriculums and each tries to use a vocabulary suitable to the grade at which the subject is most apt to be taught. Britannica and Book of Knowledge are more directly aimed at elementary school children, while the other two are more useful in high school.

The differences are partly a matter of visual impact, mood and style. Book of Knowledge, printed in four-color offset, easily excels the others in use of bright, clear pictures, and its large type and short sentences make it brisk and readable. It approaches many major subjects with an enticing narrative open ing. World Book uses the smallest type of the four, which could bother younger students, but opens up its pages with skillful use of tables, sketches and boxes.

Its sentences are short, relatively flat, but it covers more subjects than the other sets. Britannica has large type, the shortest, most oversimplified articles, the fewest illustrations and a dry factual style. Compton’s writing is lively and it covers such child-intriguing topics as magic and fairies but more prosaic topics are often overdone. A child has to work through nine pages to learn about the U.S. Postal service.

Sometimes slightly authoritarian, Compton’s scolds readers in an article on the arts: “The person who says he dislikes classical music is condemning himself, not music.”

Typical of the books’ approaches are their opening sentences on articles on Minnesota. “Minnesota is one of the chief food-producing states in the United States,” says World Book. “Nature has been good to Minnesota. It has given the state many resources for work and play,” carols Compton’s. “Minnesota is a north-central state near the center of North America,” states Britannica. “A train of two-wheeled carts screeched and rumbled along the dusty trail,” coaxes Book of Knowledge. Britannica’s brevity shows in its listing of well-known Minnesotans; it is the only book of the four that fails to list either

F. Scott Fitzgerald or Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

Historical Impact. World Book’s editors show the keenest appreciation of the readers’ thirst for recent history, devoting 21 pages to the assassination and funeral of John F. Kennedy. Compton’s has five well-turned and candid (“The President, shot through the head and throat, slumped over into his wife’s lap”) paragraphs. Britannica jams a sentence about the shooting into the same paragraph with Kennedy’s 1963 proposals for an income tax cut and civil rights bill. Book of Knowledge handles it all in one short paragraph.

All the books pride themselves on being as up to date as possible. Compton’s started the practice of annual revisions in 1922, this year has added 50 articles. World Book spent $1,000,000 to add 258 pages and change 4,000 others. Britannica rewrote 118 of its 4,103 articles, added 45, updated 582. Book of Knowledge, which ought to be most current, surprisingly fails to mention the first human space walk, that of Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov in March 1965, in its article on space. World Book and Compton’s also issue fast-selling supplementary yearbooks on recent events at $5.95 each, and Book of Knowledge plans to begin one next year.

Left-Handed Articles. All except World Book now follow Compton’s lead and include an index of facts about people, places and things not rating a full article. Unlike the other two encyclopedias, Book of Knowledge and World Book also have running cross references between articles. Book of Knowledge is strong on such how-to-do-it articles as growing penicillium molds and making a farm for earthworms.

The four encyclopedias rely heavily on outside experts either to write or review articles, but not all of these authorities recall just what they actually did. “I dash these things off with my left hand,” confides one. Book of Knowledge allows Hairdresser Mr. Kenneth to propagandize: “Although it is expensive to go to a fine hairdresser, it is well worth it, even if your visit is only once or twice a year, for you will get the perfect haircut or new hair style that will keep you looking attractive for a long time.” Conductor Leonard Bernstein, on the other hand, engagingly uses a conversational style: “Now, perhaps, our man is ready to conduct . . . No—wait. He still has not considered . . .” Most of the experts are heavily rewritten. In 20 years at Compton’s, says its editor in chief Donald E. Lawson, “I have found only two experts whose material we were able to use just about as it was—most know how to write for their peers, but they cannot write for young people.”

No matter how carefully they check and recheck articles for accuracy, some strange errors inevitably sneak in. “Asia extends from the Ural Mountains in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west,” says the Book of Knowledge. Even so, it is an exciting new contestant in one of publishing’s most competitive fields, and its maps clearly place Asia right where Asia really is.