Contains one or two haiku about each of the 119 elements, and a sentence or two explaining the reason for each haiku. This is a fun book to read and represents an interesting challenge. Alternate pages are grey with white text that did not have enough contrast for me, especially when reading at night. ( )

I saw this one in a science museum gift shop, and was instantly charmed by it, and I'm very pleased to report that I still felt that way all the way through reading it. It features one haiku-style poem for every element on the periodic table, relating in some way to that element's properties, history, or uses. These range from deeply serious to mildly amusing, and I'm honestly impressed by how well the author pulls the whole thing off. Nothing ever feels contrived or kitschy or forced, and even towards they end where it's mostly a bunch of different ways to say "here's a highly radioactive element somebody made in a lab for two seconds," it doesn't get tiring.

Each entry also includes a sentence or three explaining the science or history behind the poem. For the ones I understood without the explanation, this was a little distracting and detracted from things a bit, but for the ones where I needed the context (something that happened a lot more often as the atomic numbers rose), I found it both helpful and enjoyable.

Basically, the whole thing was just a pleasant little read perfect for my nerdy little soul. ( )