ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN'S SECOND RECORD BOOK OF WEIRD AND WONDERFUL FACTS

Encyclopedia is back with more odd facts, leading off with another clutch of Gym Dandies from the local and intramural sports pages. (Sobol has selected these highschool anecdotes to give girls and boys near-equal time, but he sometimes tends to make a joke of that very equality.) This round of One Lioners includes items on giraffe growth rate, rabbit reproduction rate, mole tunneling rate, and such anomalies as drunken robins, looped elephants, giddy pigeons, chickens fitted with contact lenses, a cat with a credit card, and a boy who bit a rattlesnake to death. Under Body English, as in a chapter of school and literacy tidbits, we learn of odd facts and scattered findings that have very little face value and thus not much clout as curiosities either. Finally a batch of Flabbergasting Facts gives equal flip attention to a wooden igloo, fatherless families, popcorn consumption at Star Wars, and the destruction of the world's rain forests. Complete with awful lead-in puns ("of corset," "Mom's the word")—for undiscriminating trivia freaks.