Life & Family | Books

Let’s say somebody came up to you on the first day of school and started telling you about a guy with thousands of pins in his face and it didn’t kill him, and a ginormous snake that swallowed a wallaby (a kangaroo-like animal) whole!

Pretty amazing, right? And you don’t believe a word of it, do you?

You should, because you’ll read about (and see) those things and more in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Seeing is Believing!

Without a doubt, your great-grandparents probably remember reading Ripley’s Believe It or Not! That’s because it started out as a newspaper column almost 100 years ago when Robert Ripley (a real person, believe it or not) became fascinated with oddities and weird things. Everything in Ripley’s column was authentic and everything in this book is absolutely true, too.

There are plenty of challenges in this book. For instance, a boy in Florida made a huge ball of rubber bands—over 700,000 in all—which weighs nearly five tons. Look around your house. Getting any ideas?

You’ll find curious creatures in here, like the four-eared cat, the two-headed kitten and the two-faced calf. Then there’s the house hippo whose “parents” adopted her as an orphan. You’ll find a pink turtle with a Mohawk, dogs on wheels and, yes, plenty of gruesome snake stories.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Seeing is Believing looks like a children’s book. It’s probably going to be found in the children’s section of your bookstore or library. The cover certainly will appeal to kids, but believe this—this book is way too good for adults to skip.

Page after page after page of this Ripley’s book is packed with bite-sized nuggets of goofy stories, horrid happenings, there’s-no-way themes, improbable (but real) pictures and tons of those silly-human stories you’d normally find in the smallest corner of your newspaper. The articles are family-friendly (like the Ripley’s column of old) and can be enjoyed by kids ages seven-to-great-grandpa.

Be aware that reading Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Seeing is Believing may result in gasps, I-can-do-that’s and time-loss—but you won’t mind. This is a pretty cool book, and you can believe that.