What Ever Happened to Eyewitness?
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- Опубліковано 24 лис 2024
- Eyewitness books were a cultural phenomenon, sparking a love of learning in countless readers. But one day, they seemed to disappear from shelves. What happened? In this video, we're investigating the rise and fall of Eyewitness, exploring the reasons behind their decline, and discussing their lasting impact on education.
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Music:
Hard Boiled, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Rising Tide, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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Sources:
www.librarythi...
• What was so special ab...
• Eyewitness The Making ...
• Eyewitness: The Rise a...
www.amazon.com...
en.wikipedia.o...)
www.theguardia...
I was an after school tutor for elementary school kids a few years ago. I would borrow as many Eyewitness books as I could for my students to read from the public library. They would devour them like I did when I was their age. I was also glad to see DK updated many topics within the series.
That's so great and kind of amazing that they still are in school libraries. But it is kind of heartwarming that another generation can appreciate these, I guess it is a testament to the quality of the series!
Seeing that intro gave me such a blast of nostalgia! I remember seeing that show and those books, but I never realized they were connected.
As a 90s kid I would see DK Eyewitness books everywhere in my school library, book fair, the public library and got some for my birthday, and even though I haven't bought any in years I might as well buy some to continue enjoying to read and look inside those timeless books.
Eyewitness helped me so much in opening my mind to the world around me. It showed to me that learning was cool and exciting. Mythology was probably the book I read the most.
Oh I should have included some shots from Mythology! That one was great. I think a ton of kids felt the same way as you were Eyewitness really got them excited to read nonfiction
I remember reading books on myths, animals, countries, scientists and time periods. They certainly aided me in learning a lot about the world. I found their stuff on the American revolution important because it did point out that George Washington was a slaveowner. In a time of rage over learning about racism and slavery in American history, teaching children something like this is important.
I hope they help kids learn more about the world.
I’m confident the one I had about Soldiers is what started my autistic interest of military operations and hardware.
Dude I’m so happy you mentioned this wonderful series! I grew up in a small town in California and at the libraries were literally hundreds of dk eyewitness books and I would check them out and always loved them, including the dc and marvel and Star Wars visual dictionary books! Seeing someone remember them fondly makes me smile and feel like a little kid with an appreciation for reading again! Dk pirates and dk world war and American revolution were always my go to! I feel 99% of history and topical books are nothing compared to these early 90s and 2000s books! This is a awesome video, thank you 😊
Hey thank you so much for the kind words, it's so cool to find other people out there who remember this awesome series haha, never read the american revolution one, but now I have to!
Eyewitness looks like an awesome series! I grew up with I Spy books [whatever happened to them by the way?] and the Where's Waldo books, so I may be partially biased. Also, I'd definitely get the cat and insect books, mostly because of lions, butterflies, and dragonflies.
I Spy is and where's waldo is on my list! I think we might have had similar childhoods because I loved those books too! Actually I should have mentioned I spy in this video, thanks for pointing that out haha. I would highly rec the cat and insect books from this series they are excellent!
@@exitsexamined I am so excited for those! I Spy barely gets any recognition anymore, and Where's Waldo doesn't seem to be as popular as it used to be. A shame, because those books are super fun! Will you cover Will Vinton Studios one day? It's a really sad story. At least some of Will's characters [The California Raisins, The Noid, The M&Ms Spokescandies, and the cast of The Adventures Of Mark Twain] are still nostalgic icons.
Eyewitness Arms and Armor was my literal life as a kid, oh man gotta find where I put it now!
We didn't have these books in my corner of the world, but we definitely got some of the books inspired by them- National Geographic Jr., Discovery Picture Encyclopedia, etc.
Thinking about it, you can see the impact of these books on other publications to this day too. I have some books from The Met, The V&A, and the Smithsonian that look very much like these. Lots of beautiful photos against a white background with dense writing spread out amongst them. Appealing to children with all the illustrations, but enjoyable to any age with the amount of information in them.
National Geographic Jr, that brings out some memories! How was Discovery Picture Encyclopedia? I never read them!
That's an interesting connection to the Met V&A / Smithsonian, and those are probably geared towards an older audience, just goes to show the power of this format of books had, like you say with almost any demographic!
The Picture Encyclopedias were a beautiful set of books! Illustrations and photos with lots of colour coded info boxes.
My theory on the museum books is that the people who grew up with books like Eyewitness etc. are the ones designing the layouts now and are using that style because they know they make for engaging reads!
I loved these as a kid and now we snag them every library trip for my 9 year old
Oh that's so cool that you still see them in the libraries? Is the collection usually pretty big?
@exitsexamined it's not super big at my local branch but even here they've got a bunch scattered throughout Children's Non-Fiction. We've got five checked out now, but I think next time we go I'm going to see how many are hanging out
Just the other day, I watched a video that used a portion of that theme song. I felt the splash of familiarity, but couldn’t place it until I watched this video. Thank you it’s another reason to enjoy your videos.
haha glad I could help out! And thanks so much for the kind words!
This video is great. Im an artist and I collect these books as a sources of reference and inspiration. I find them in second hand shops and book stores for cheap all the time.
Hey thanks so much for the kind words, really appreciate it. Cool finding other people who love these books!
My favorite was the Tornados and Hurricanes book. I remember my brother used to be into WW2 and got the Eyewitness book for it. We kept getting the Star Wars ones too
Man thanks for making this video! One of my favorite childhood memories was going to the book fair and buying these books
I remember getting a DVD from the library to watch it in elementary school
Love this channel. Hope it gets more views!
Thanks so much for the kind words! It's so cool that there are people out there who enjoy going down memory lane with me haha
I remember there was a I think an official UA-cam channel that uploaded the episodes in better quality but has now disappeared as far as I know. At least there are some that have it archived here on the platform
I already subscribed after watching the ASoUE videos but if I could, I'd subscribe again. these books, along with Ranger Rick and Zoobooks, were all devoured by kindergarten me. the other book that struck me in kindergarten (my mom read it to me, which is honestly a wild choice) was A Wrinkle in Time. I would love to see you cover L'Engle at some point if at all possible! also very excited to watch the Artemis Fowl video next.
Hey thanks so much that's super kind of you to say! I'm definitely going to cover a Wrinkle in Time at some point on this channel, that was a favorite or me growing up too! I haven't heard of L'Engle, Is it kind of like a wrinkle in time?
@@exitsexamined Madeline L'Engle is the author of A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels! I loved the second book A Wind in the Door for having my intro to biblically accurate angels, Proginoskes.
I also love their travel books ☺️ Lots of pictures 😝
I looked at a couple while researching for this vid! Any that you liked in particular? Maybe I'd use them for my next trip!
@@exitsexamined I found the travel books about «old» places very helpfull, like Athens (Greece in general) and Rome / Florence&Tuscany (Italy in general too) because of historical context and clear explanations of the famous landmarks and buildings with lovely pictures ☺️ But I also found the books usefull for places that did not know very many things about like Ireland and Norway. Seeing the pictures of the fjords or the cliffs of moher and some other towns and villages I had never heard about, really made me excited to go see them for myself ☺️
I always wondered what happened to these!! I loved them and spent so much time in the library woth them!! But like you say, I never hear anyone talk about them so it's like they never existed. (Pssst. Next Hank the Cowdog or Bunicula please =)
it made very happy to a dk eyewitness books they were cool to as we used sat back 95
Read a few book at my school libariy
I still have the old ones about Cats and World War II
haha this is what I love about the series, they have literally every subject from WWII....to cats
Mr brother has most 😅 of the book. He’s autistic, and loved the tiny pictures
I would go to the library & check out as many of them as I possibly could & read all of them three times over at least. The only one I didn't particularly enjoy was Epidemic b/c it was gross
I love encyclopedias.
Darth Jar Jar claims yet another victim
I still love both the books and especially the TV series to this day, but nobody should call the books "kid stuff". DK created these for all people regardless of age. Dont let anyone say otherwise. They`re wrong. Even DK is wrong. The reason why the fell is because they were mismanaged and marketing them towards the wrong audience was one reason.
Eyewitness was cool, but have you ever read a ZooBook?
Bruhhhhhh, hot daymn I fully forgot about these books. Fully unlocked core memories 🤌❤
(Edit, mate seriously tysm I had been thinking back about the eyewitness show for weeks but had no clue what it was called. I could only remember the intro & kept trying to keyword search it under National Geographic cable)
Also the DK books about Castles spawned my earliest obsession with them in baha 😅
Hey it's honestly my pleasure, it was so much fun researching them for this video and unlocked some core memories for me too haha. I would have loved to see the keyword search terms that were used haha . Oh and the castle one was awesome! I think I loved that one as a kid and poured over it when I visited the UK, I tried to include an image of one of the pages from it in this video but couldn't find a high enough res.