(Roland Allen, Profile, £25)

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Who would have thought that a material as commonplace as paper could have such a rich history and profound effect on our lives? In The Notebook we discover, for instance, that notebooks were used to create the first double-entry bookkeeping system, before later seeing use as climate logs, being used to store recipes and employed in all sorts of ways by different authors.

Teachers will find this to be a rich source of information and history that can really resonate with students’ modern-day experiences and interests. Some may find it useful to find out how bullet journaling has been used to counteract ADHD; that MRI scans have shown how artists construct pictures; and that writing down traumatic experiences seems to have all kinds of health benefits, besides the obvious.

Well-researched and highly readable, it’s a compelling collection of facts, findings and ideas.

This review was first published in Teach Secondary magazine.

I also published a different review before the book was published. You can read that on my Eclecticism site, here.