What will you discover in the mind-blowing 100 Things to Know series?

The high point of my career as a children’s author came six and a half minutes into a talk that I gave recently to the Year 2 children at my son’s school. I was trying to describe to them what it is I do all day. I explained that, as one of the writers on the 100 Things to Know series, I spend my days reading books and combing the internet in search of perfectly amazing facts. No subject is too big or too small, no question too odd or obscure. The facts I’m after aren’t the most important or useful ones - the facts that make it into 100 Things are the ones that make us feel a certain thrill of excitement.

“For example,” I said, “did you know... that there is a cloud of gas floating in a distant galaxy that tastes of raspberries?”

There was a short pause as about fifty seven-year-olds took this in. Then, a low murmur of surprise built into loud chatter. “Raspberries? Raspberries!” 

One child called out: “I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you,” and fell into a fierce debate with his neighbours.

And that was it. That was the moment that I’m constantly working for, and that our 100 Things to Know series sets up again and again, in books about music, or history, or the oceans: the mingled surprise, delight - and yes, even disbelief - brought on by an extraordinary new fact. I’ve never been prouder than when my son’s classmate at first refused to believe in a raspberry-flavoured cloud.

That fact, one of my favourites, comes from our book 100 Things to Know about Space. And what makes it so good is that it invariably sparks a bigger question: “How do they know THAT?! Who has been out to TASTE that impossibly distant cloud? How can we be SURE?” And that’s really the crux of it. The page isn’t about the taste of the cloud - it’s about how we can know something that seems impossible to know.

The joy of writing pages like that one has always stuck with me and my 100 Things colleagues. In our research we found that a lot of the most exciting science, history, philosophy and art happens right at the border between the known and the unknown. We kept coming across thrilling mysteries, 
secrets, unknowable and almost unknowable facts. And so at last we decided to fill a whole book with them. 

Now, 100 Things to Know about the Unknown is finally complete. It is packed with thrilling facts about dark matter detectors, dead emperors, ancient spycraft, secret sauces and literary ghosts. It’s full of things you didn’t know you didn’t know, and some things that nobody can ever know. I hope you’ll find it amazing, exciting, and maybe even unbelievable.