Pears and its Junior

Press, 17 December 1988, Page 23

Pears and its Junior

Pears Cyclopaedia, 1988-89. Edited by Christopher Cook. Pelham/ Penguin, 1988. 1044 pp. $29.95. Junior Pears Encyclopaedia, Edited by Edward Blishen. Pelham/Penguin, 1988. 760 pp. Illustrations. $25.95. Pears Cyclopaedia has been going now for 97 years — a Victorian advertising gimmick that has turned into a valuable institution. The latest edition maintains its standard of accuracy and presentation, and gives more prominence to advances in science and technology. New sections deal with advances in biotechnology and environmental chemistry; there is an expanded section on computers. Other new sections deal with fiction in the 1980 s, and especially in the Commonwealth; and with the rapid economic changes round the world in the last 18 months. As always, the writing is simple and sensible, whether the subject is inflation, or botany, or the treatment of illnesses at home. This edition is particularly good on the sharemarket crash of 1987, its cause and its implications. Pears is not optimistic. “In the same way that the stock

market crash of 1929 was followed by the economic slump of 1930-32, the crash of 1987 seems likely to induce a recession during 1988-90,” it writes. Pears is not perfect. The small map of New Zealand, for instance, needs revision, especially in a tidying up of place-names which at present include Patea but not Palmerston North, Ross but not Greymouth. Still, the atlas is only a very small part of a generally excellent reference book.

“Junior Pears” has reached 28 editions. It has the same clarity and excellent writing as the larger book. It deals with matters of special interest to young people, from the workings of a motor car to a brief history of art. Some sections are of use only to children in Britain; most have international appeal.

One notable achievement: this encyclopaedia manages to make sense of the rules for the punctuation of English in less than three pages. That section should be compulsory reading for every schoolteacher in the English-speaking world. — Literary Editor.