Ah, yes. So many school reports were written from World Book Encyclopedia. I remember going to our neighbor's house when I needed to use them because a set of encyclopedias was not something even remotely affordable for us. We did eventually get a single volume Columbia Encyclopedia.
The set in this picture was found in a garage sale... That family had "upgraded" to Encyclopedia Britanica! I remember the traveling salesman coming to the house, and the price was way out of our reach. Now, we have it all and more in our pocket.
What sent my mind back to the days of elementary school projects, and what our smartphones lack, was the distinct smell of the pages
My father was an elementary school teacher back in the 1970s, when I was a child. He got the teacher's "discount" package, and it was something like $500 back then!! And we got the Annual "Book of 19xx" as well.
I was so angry at Laddie, my young dog, when she ate part of the E-F volume where the flags of the world were located
. ;-)
(yes, I said Laddie and she in the same paragraph. Named her that despite my mother's suggestion Lassie might be more appropriate).
One of my favorite lookups was about the human eye and how we see. I was amazed with the example of how an "afterimage" is momentarily burned onto our retina. There was a picture of an American flag, in off-colors. The caption instructed you to look at the image for 30 seconds, then quickly look away at a white piece of paper. The afterimage that was produced was that of a flag in the correct red white and blue!
I've remembered that page for years. Now, the amount of web pages I can click through in a sitting is staggering, but good luck recalling the location of something I've surfed only two minutes earlier.
