nonfiction – Page 10

Marshmallow reviews How to Speak Emoji by Fred Benenson

Today Marshmallow wanted to talk about a little book on emoji originally published in 2015: How to Speak Emoji by Fred Benenson.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like funny books about how to do something or books about popular culture, then this might be the book for you.

Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): In this book, Fred Benenson creates a useful glossary that you can use to navigate text conversations using emojis. Though this book is nonfiction, and is meant to be informative, some of the emoji strands have humorous meanings.

In the first part of the book, there is a list of the meanings of singular, specific emojis. These can get a bit subjective. For example, the author writes that the 💅 emoji means “Ooh, fancy!” And the 🆗 emoji means “grudging approval”.

After the initial, brief glossary, there is an emoji phrase book. The phrases in this vary by section. There is one section for pickup lines (which get pretty, um, weird 🫤), a section for food and drink 🍔, a section for insults, and many more (including but not limited to technology, travel, medical/emergency, weather, the Twelve Days of Christmas, etc ♾️). Idioms like “an elephant never forgets” become 🐘🚫💭 and “above and beyond” becomes 👆➕🔭🌌 (this is in the idioms section). These sections are all very entertaining, and it is interesting to see how the author translates standard phrases and sayings into emojis.

Marshmallow is reading How to Speak Emoji by Fred Benenson. — Marshmallow is reading *How to Speak Emoji* by Fred Benenson.

Marshmallow’s Review: You might be wondering, “Marshmallow 🤨🧐🤔 why would I want a book about the meaning of emojis when I can just google them?” My response to that question is that this book is also funny and teaches you how to communicate with emojis by themselves, which, admittedly, is not necessarily an essential skill but is definitely fun. And how can you not love a book which has the smiling poop emoji on its cover? I was a little sad to see that my favorite melting 🫠 emoji was not mentioned. However, it makes total sense because that is a new, quite recent (2023) addition to the vast army of emojis and only came out after this book was written (2015).

As a bunny who enjoys using emojis for the sake of using emojis, I liked this book a lot. Sometimes I find emojis that I don’t understand the meaning of, like this one: 🙃. And it is fun to learn how to use emojis to make phrases, and decoding them can be a fun game with friends and family. However, I would say that some of the content in this book is not appropriate for young bunnies, let us say, under the age of thirteen. Some of the phrases can be overly sexual. I just skimmed over those to get to the ones that were more amusing in my opinion. Otherwise however, this would be a very fun book for all readers. The sheer number of emojis and their complex meaning is fascinating 🤩 and this book does a good job explaining them.

Overall, this is a cute guide to using emojis 🥰 and I will take my knowledge gained from this to write this phrase: ⤵️📻➕😎📚🐰🐰🐰📋. (If you want, you can put your guess of what it means in the comments below!)

Marshmallow’s Rating: 98%.

Marshmallow rates How to Speak Emoji by Fred Benenson 98%. — Marshmallow rates *How to Speak Emoji* by Fred Benenson 98%.

Marshmallow reviews Sapiens – A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, David Vandermeulen, and Daniel Casanave

Today Marshmallow reviews Sapiens – A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind, the first volume, published in 2020, of the multi-volume graphic novelization of Yuval Noah Harari’s 2011 book Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind. Sprinkles is taking notes and asking questions.

Sprinkles: I know you enjoy graphic novels, just like Caramel does, so I was not too surprised when you decided to pick up this book.

Marshmallow: Yep, and I actually enjoyed reading it too. And I think that, if you like books that ask deep questions or investigate human history, then this is the book for you!

S: Hmm, I see what you did there. You begin all your reviews with this kind of an invitation. I think it works well here too! So what is this book about?

M: It is basically about the entire history of humanity’s origins.

S: That sounds ambitious!

M: It is. So I think this will take him four or five volumes, but he is trying to tell in graphic novel form what he writes in his original book from 2011. It’s pretty novel I’d say.

S: I see. Tell me more.

M: So in this book, human evolution is portrayed as a reality TV show. And mass extinction becomes a crime investigation. We follow the author Yuval and his niece Zoe as they investigate the meaning of labels like “species” and “genus” with Professor Saraswati. Each character is drawn as a little caricature. Then we see Yuval and Zoe watching “The Greatest Show on Earth!”, or “Evolution!” This leads to an investigation of why and how the species of Homo Sapiens dominates the Earth today. After all, there were several other species in the human genus.

S: I can see that you are using some big words, maybe from your biology class?

M: Well, not quite. The book uses them, so I think it makes sense for me to use them too.

S: Makes sense to me.

Marshmallow is reading Sapiens - A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, David Vandermeulen, and Daniel Casanave. — Marshmallow is reading *Sapiens – A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind* by Yuval Noah Harari, David Vandermeulen, and Daniel Casanave.

S: So I know that after reading this book, you also followed up with some reviews of it to see how it was received.

M: Yes. Because the author intends to share some possibly controversial ideas about the history of humanity, there was a lot I did not know about in the book, so it was really interesting to read. But I wanted to know if what he was saying was really correct. This is a graphic novel after all, and though some graphic novels have extensive footnotes and such, this one has none, and it has no references. So I wanted to check to see what others who know more about the topic thought.

S: So what did you find out?

M: Well, our readers can start by checking the Wikipedia article on the original book. The original book sold really well and got a lot of great reviews from well-known and highly regarded people. But it seems like some of the more scientific takes on the book are not as complimentary. A lot of them do like it actually, but there are some folks that say that there is not that much that is new in the book and whatever is new and original is not accurate.

S: I see. Now it is not terrible if there is nothing new for scientists, because no matter what they all know, their knowledge is not always accessible to the general audience.

M: Exactly. The graphic novel format is a really good way to reach a lot more people. So some apparently called it “infotainment,” but maybe that is actually not a terrible thing. I think the Lucy & Andy Neanderthal series that I read and reviewed is also kind of infotainment but I still found it extremely educational.

S: I agree with you there. Those books are a lot of fun and teach you a lot too.

M: Even our reviews are probably infotainment – fun yet informative, I hope. The accuracy concern is more difficult to dismiss though. Not being a scientist, I am not great at gauging that. So my advice for curious bunnies is to read this because it is a great story, and you will learn a lot, but still take it with a grain of salt, because if some parts of it feel really out there, maybe they are. So it might be worth double-checking things out on your own.

S: I think that is a very prudent and thoughtful recommendation, Marshmallow.

M: I’m a very prudent and thoughtful bunny. And now we are both using big words!

S: Yep, it must be this book!

M: We must be smarter or something! Maybe we are evolving.

S: Okay, okay, hold it there. Maybe this is a good place to end this review. So if you were to rate this book what would your rating be?

M: I really really enjoyed it, and I’d say 100% but then again the accuracy question makes me say 95%.

S: That’s fair. Okay, thanks for your neat review, Marshmallow. What would you like to tell our readers as we wrap it up?

M: Stay tuned for more amazing reviews from the book bunnies!

Marshmallow rates Sapiens - A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari, David Vandermeulen, and Daniel Casanave, 95%. — Marshmallow rates *Sapiens – A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind*, by Yuval Noah Harari, David Vandermeulen, and Daniel Casanave, 95%.

Marshmallow reviews Philographics: Big Ideas in Simple Shapes by Genís Carreras

As she is getting older, Marshmallow has been getting more and more interested in philosophical ideas. Today she reviews Philographics: Big Ideas in Simple Shapes, written by Genís Carreras and published in 2013. Sprinkles, who is also interested in the book, is asking questions and taking notes.

Sprinkles: So Marshmallow, I am so excited you wanted to review this book!

Marshmallow: Always happy to make you happy!

S: Thank you! Okay, so can you tell us a bit about what this book is about?

M: Well, the title is kind of self-explanatory. The book is about philosophy, more specifically about a hundred or so philosophical terms. The author of the book, or rather the artist Genís Carreras, uses two pages, side by side, for each term. Sort of reminded me of the book I recently reviewed about logical fallacies (An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi) in terms of the format.

S: I can definitely see that. So on each two-page spread, what do you see?

M: On the left page, there is a short, one-sentence definition of the term, apparently written by Chris Thomas, a friend of Carreras. And on the right side, there is a graphic depiction of the term, created by Carreras himself.

S: Oh, that kind of reminds me of a book Caramel reviewed way back: Opposites Abstract by Mo Willems.

M: Yes, you are right! But in that book there was no explanation, just a term on one side and a graphic on the other.

S: I guess that is why the Mo Willems book is more of a children’s book and this is not.

M: Yes, also this one has a lot of big ideas. The terms are all ordered in alphabetical order, and most of them are -isms. I mean, they are terms like feminism, optimism, realism, capitalism, nihilism, aestheticism, spiritualism, atomism, historicism, and so on.

S: Yes, this could be a really good dictionary of -isms.

M: Yes. But there are also some terms that don’t end with -ism that belong to philosophy. Like free will, extropy, dogma, and utopia.

Marshmallow is reading Philographics: Big Ideas in Simple Shapes by Genís Carreras. — Marshmallow is reading *Philographics: Big Ideas in Simple Shapes* by Genís Carreras.

S: I think maybe the definition of realism (“the philosophical view that asserts that reality is fundamentally based on, and is shaped by, ideas and mental experience, rather than material forces”) is not quite accurate, but one mistake in such a neat book is not a big deal.

M: Yes, I can see how the book’s definition of realism is not quite in line with what Wikipedia or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy say. But other than that, I think we did not find anything else that sounded off.

S: Yes, the project is an awesome idea. And I think it is carried out quite superbly.

M: Yes, I totally think so. The graphics are so simple, and yet, they are most evocative. And I really like the use of bright colors in most of them.

S: Did you know that Carreras has a website where one can see many of the graphics from the book?

M: No! But we should definitely put a link to it!

S: Of course. Here it is: https://studiocarreras.com/philographics

M: All in all, I think this is a really neat book and it would be a great starting point if you are interested in big ideas. Carreras offers us a great way to get introduced to these big -isms and the connections between them.

S: How so?

M: At the bottom of most pages, there are some symbols that tell you what philosophical field the term belongs to. Like politics, religion, metaphysics, and ethics. And sometimes there are page numbers to send you to ideas that are directly related to the term on the page.

S: I see. That is really neat! And I agree that this book can be a neat guide to getting into philosophy.

M: Yep!

S: So how would you rate this book?

M: I’d rate it 100%.

S: Sounds good! So let us wrap this review up. What would you like to tell our readers?

M: Stay tuned for more amazing reviews from the book bunnies!

Marshmallow rates Philographics: Big Ideas in Simple Shapes by Genís Carreras 100%. — Marshmallow rates *Philographics: Big Ideas in Simple Shapes* by Genís Carreras 100%.

Marshmallow reviews National Parks of the U.S.A. by Kate Siber and Chris Turnham

Marshmallow loves everything beautiful, and today she picked a beautiful book to talk about: National Parks of the U.S.A., written by Kate Siber, illustrated by Chris Turnham, and first published in 2018. Sprinkles was intrigued by the book and therefore is asking questions and taking notes along the way.

Marshmallow reviews National Parks of the U.S.A., written by Kate Siber and illustrated by Chris Turnham. — Marshmallow reviews *National Parks of the U.S.A.*, written by Kate Siber and illustrated by Chris Turnham.

Sprinkles: So Marshmallow, you picked a really beautiful book for today’s review. Can you tell us a bit about it?

Marshmallow: If you like the wilderness or at least you enjoy being outdoors, and especially if you are in the U.S.A. and want to know more about its many national parks, then this might be the book for you.

S: It also seems to be a great book for folks who might just want to look at a pretty book.

M: Yes, I agree. It is really a pretty book. Every page is beautifully illustrated. Even though the illustrations seem to be using a limited color palette, focusing mainly on oranges, browns, and greens, each page is distinct and well designed. The limited color scheme actually works really well.

S: Okay, so we both agree that this is a beautiful book to look at. So let us get to the content of the book next.

M: As you can tell from the title, the book is about the national parks in the U.S.A. They are organized more or less geographically. It goes from the east, to the central U.S., then to the Southwest, then to the Rocky Mountains, then to the West. And finally there is a section on Alaska and then the tropics. For each of the regions there is an introductory page or two, and then they focus on some specific parks from the region and talk about the geographic formations, and the flora and fauna found in there.

Marshmallow is reading National Parks of the U.S.A., written by Kate Siber and illustrated by Chris Turnham. — Marshmallow is reading *National Parks of the U.S.A.*, written by Kate Siber and illustrated by Chris Turnham.

S: Did you find some parks that you want to visit some day?

M: Yes, several actually. We have not been to most of these yet. And I think it would be great if we could go to at least some of them.

S: True. Our country has so many beautiful national parks to visit. We have been to a few state parks but not to any of the national ones yet.

M: Maybe we can go on a rabbit-road trip and see some of them.

S: That would be lovely Marshmallow! Did you know that the idea of national parks is relatively new? The first one in the U.S. is the Yellowstone National Park, which only became a national park in 1872. And today many countries around the world have reserved land in similar ways.

M: I did not know that before we found that Wikipedia article; it is very informative. But my book is also very informative. For example did you know that glaciers are not “massive stationary blocks of ice”, but instead are “rivers of frozen water that flow down mountains”? I learned that when I was reading about the Glacier National Park.

S: That is cool!

M: And apparently rangers in the Badlands National Park say that “you have only 500,000 years to visit before the spires and the hills [of the park] wash away from rain and wind”.

S: Sounds like the author has a playful voice.

M: Yes. I really liked her voice. She is playful and friendly and makes the reader want to see all these places.

S: I’d say that is a successful book! How would you rate it?

M: I’d rate it 100%.

S: I knew it! Okay, this is a good time to wrap this up. What would you like to tell our readers?

M: Stay tuned for more amazing reviews from the book bunnies!

Marshmallow rates National Parks of the U.S.A., written by Kate Siber and illustrated by Chris Turnham, 100%. — Marshmallow rates *National Parks of the U.S.A.*, written by Kate Siber and illustrated by Chris Turnham, 100%.