Bunpei Yorifuji’s illustrations and annotations in Wonderful Life with the Elements would pass the Walter White test. If Breaking Bad made us love chemistry, Wonderful Life with the Elements helps us understand chemistry. And not in a "smart textbook" fashion, but in a highly accessible, "I’m reading this great book" fashion. At a basic level, it’s a lineup of the 118 basic elements, along with some education on why elements matter in our lives. Because of Yorifuji’s orientation as a designer and illustrator, especially for advertising, this isn’t abstract art. It is art intended to tell a story and serve a purpose. If you approach Wonderful Life with the Elements knowing nothing about chemistry and the elements, you’re sure to leave with a good understanding of this stuff. Which is important, since these are the building blocks of literally everything we are and that we interact with in life.
If you do know a thing or three about the elements, you’ll appreciate how well Wonderful Life with the Elements conveys information through visual depictions of characters based on each element. In a nutshell, Yorifuji created the image of a little person representing each element. Some design touches are obvious, like showing the person standing on solid ground to represent solids, versus partially melted for liquid, and what looks like a ghost for gas elements. Others are way less obvious, such as giving characters similar hairstyles to represent logical groupings for several elements. The relative age of the element (framed around when it was discovered by science) shows up as the age of the character, from babies like thorium (#90) to old men like silver (#40).
Each element is given at least one page where vital stats are shown, along with complementary illustrations in the margin that depict special characteristics of that element. For example, we learn that vanadium (#23) is present in blue paint, makes for very tough knives, and can be found in the bloodstream of "marine invertebrate filter feeders like sea squirts." All the information you’d find in a classic chemistry textbook is also found in Wonderful Life with the Elements, but the experience of reading this book is much different. We don’t anticipate that students will be assigned Yorifuji’s book during high school chemistry, but the first teacher who succeeds in building a curriculum around Wonderful Life with the Elements will be much loved by his or her students.
