What If By: Randall Munroe 

Have you ever asked yourself a “what if” question? No matter how silly or crazy it must have been, we have all asked ourselves a hypothetical what if. And, we never came back to the question to know if there was an answer.

In “What If” by Randall Munroe you get the chance to read a bunch of other peoples what if questions they have submitted to Munroe’s question and answer blog. Munroe takes to time to give an in depth answer as well as stick figure comics. No matter how insane the question may seem, Munroe does his best to give the answer in a sarcastic to the point way. Reading this book you get a nice laugh as well as learning things you may not even realize. For example one of the question asks what would happen if earth stopped spinning but gravity remained. Without making it to technical and scientific Munroe answers the question in a way that we can all understand. One of the funniest question in the book is one that Munroe says is asked quite a but, “What would happen if everyone on Earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant? In a funny way he says first the whole Earth population would have magically be transported to the same location, then pick an exact time. He laughs and says that all it would do was make us all look silly. Earth outweighs the whole Earth population, there for nothing would happen and the Earth would not be affected. The pictures helping to illiterate this are just as funny as the question.

Reading this book you get the chance to learn things you may have also wondered as well. Not only can you learn from this book, you can get a good laugh. This is a good book for young adults because it is a learning tool that is not so serious. I think that young adults would like this book as a way of learning different what if scenarios, and take away a better understand of things they may not have known.

PROS: This is great book that has the potential of learning a lot of facts you may not have known with pictures to help with the understanding.

CONS: The answers are giving in a very sarcastic way, as well as some of the facts in the book may be a little to advanced for Young Adult learning.

To learn more on Randall Munroe and his web comic series as well as more what if questions and answers: 

 https://xkcd.com/

http://www.npr.org/2014/09/07/346082579/what-if-there-were-an-entire-book-devoted-to-absurd-hypotheticals

https://xkcd.com/about/

https://www.ted.com/talks/randall_munroe_comics_that_ask_what_if