When I was an adolescent boy, my teacher gave me a beautifully looking "scientific" encyclopedia, translated into Russian from a British original. Graphically it was a masterpiece; I think it was used as one of samples in in Alan Hurlburt's "The Grid". Yet as I tried to read it I was somewhat puzzled and disappointed. Normally as I read a scientific book for my age I could form a coherent big picture. If I could not, then the material was hard, so I had to re-read, write things down, explain to myself and I would finally get it. Yet with this encyclopedia I could not get even a glimpse of the big picture. A factoid here, a factoid there, all very well illustrated, the whole book in full color, which was rare those days, but without any links between those factoids. As a Russian saying goes, it all flew into one ear and flew out from another. Nothing stayed. I've got much more from a modest physics schoolbook where I re-read every topic and derived every formula.