Drawings of the author XKCD will contribute to school textbooks

In the summer of 2015, web comic book author XKCD Randall Munro became a popular writer. His book " Thing Explainer " ("Explaining Things") three months before the start of sales (!) Came out on top in the subsections "Scientific Tools" and "Mechanics" of the section "Science and Mathematics" of the Amazon store. She holds the 1st place in sales so far (March 2016). Even Bill Gates called it one of the best books he read last year.



Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt made a good profit and decided to build on success. This publisher also publishes many textbooks for schools and colleges. Yesterday, it was announced that some illustrations from the book “Explanation of Things” would be added to school textbooks on chemistry, biology and physics for the 2016/2017 school year.



On September 1, American schoolchildren will return from the holidays, open textbooks and see something like this:



The device rocket "Saturn-5"



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In the book “Explanation of Things”, Randall Munro explains the design and purpose of every detail, without using any special terms, but only the thousand most popular words of the English language. For example, how the data centers are arranged, what are the flat stones on which we live (tectonic plates), how this thing works for taxiing by plane (control devices in the cockpit of an airliner) and what small bags of water we are made of (cells).



According to the senior vice president of the publishing house Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, simple and understandable illustrations in the textbooks will help to "deepen the involvement of schoolchildren."



Randall Munro approved the idea. He hopes that his drawings will break the monotony and regularity of typical textbooks: "I hope it will be something like," Look, there is some funny and unexpected thing here. "



For textbooks, Randall will make several additional drawings, including an illustration of how life returns to the scorched earth after a forest fire or environmental disaster (in a similar way, there will probably be a “revival” of Mars and other lifeless planets).



Below is a fragment of the book by Randall Munro “Thing Explainer” , which explains the structure of the human body, the device of the elevator and the Saturn-5 rocket.