Social Studies

Children make up one-third of the world's population. But who are these 2.2 billion children and what are their lives like? Author David J. Smith's search for answers takes readers around the world to meet children of all ages, nationalities and religions.

At this moment, there are 7 billion people on the planet! It's hard to picture so many people at one time - but what if we imagine the whole world as a village of just 100 people?

In this village:
21 people speak a Chinese dialect
10 earn less than two dollars a day
14 cannot read or write
45 have a television in their homes
47 do not always have enough to eat

What we eat says a lot about who we are and where we come from. The five children in this book live in very different countries, and they each have their own ideas about what tastes good. But they have lots in common, too: they all go food shopping and help with the cooking, share mealtimes with their families, eat special foods to celebrate, and have things they love to eat and things they definitely don't.

Wherever we live in this world—whether our country is rich or poor—water is vital to our survival on this planet. This book follows the daily lives of children in Peru,Mauritania, the United States, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Tajikistan, and explores what water means to them.Where does it come from? How do they use it?

With the growing threat of climate change affecting all our lives, this book invites discussion on the ways different countries and cultures value this most precious of our planet’s natural resources.