[1]: https://2warpstoneptune.com/2014/03/04/usborne-publishing-th...
https://bookreviewers.online/2018/07/17/things-to-make-and-d...
Every week, at the local grocery store, a new volume would be available for purchase, covering a new subject area (Anatomy, Animals, Aircraft, Watercraft, Electricity, Space, Weather, etc.). I was obsessed. I re-read all 15 of them countless times.
30+ years later, I bought a set off ebay in great shape to read with my kids. Seeing the diagrams and pictures I realized it was the source of many of the facts I know today.
You never know what's going to have an impact on your kids helping them realize what they are (going to be) interested in!
This is one of the few areas where paper really wins. You get concentrated information in one physical object with hard boundaries which arrives on a regular slow schedule. You have plenty of time to read it thoroughly and start thinking and imagining.
The web is a constant hurricane of distractions. Wikipedia has far more information than any paper encyclopedia, and in a superficial sense it's far more accessible. But there's always more, and always something else. You firehose it, forget most it, and don't get the bigger picture or the implied narrative linking everything together.
N.B. There are many used sets available on eBay/Poshmark/Mercari/Amazon etc.
What? When? How? Why? Who? Where? etc
The questions would range from the "how do planes fly" , to "who discovered gunpowder?". They would have illustration, which was super helpful to picture steam power, and the Cretacean period duration relative to other periods, etc. It was all in color so I suspect they have aged well. I remember coming back to certain questions over and over. Some that I still remember - "When did the universe begin?" "What happened to the dinosaurs?".
IN short I cannot recommend this set enough. I tried to google, I'll need to come back and post it once I find the original that is hanging out at a relative's library.
I obsessively checked it out of the library, pouring over page after page of exciting future and near future advancements, and in my little mind seeing a clear path from the Space Shuttle to the city of the future printed on the cover. It was one of those breathless books that showed humanity figuring out how to engineer every natural process, picture upon picture of far off space stations intermingled with then current hydroponics gardens and concepts well beyond that.
I found myself competing with at least one other child and the book never hit the shelf but for a few minutes as it was almost on permanent loan in somebody's backpack. My mother looked for a few weeks trying to find where to buy it for me, but never found a bookstore with it. It was like an object sent from another dimension, mean to teach children and guide them to an inevitable future Utopia.
It worked. I've worked in technology and R&D my entire career. I've yearned to bring about that future.
A few years ago, thinking back to this formative codex, I went about trying to find it and happened to buy a copy on Ebay which set about a small project to get the equipment together to scan it and put it up on the internet archive as no digital version of the book exists to my knowledge. I'm almost there, but haven't quite gotten everything lined up.
Many years later, I learned about the WEC and it immediately hit me that this was the adult version of the feeder league I had been participating in as a child.
I can't believe the WEC is out there now. I need to get my crap together and get the Kid's Catalog up as well.