This collection of invented maps is quite an exploration, showing you the world in ways that you would never have imagined. It includes The Map of Stereotypes; Maps of Internet, YouTube and Gaming; Maps of Literature, Music and Sports; The Map of Separatist Europe; and dozens of others.
I came aware of Vargic’s Miscellany of Curious Maps after the Boston Globe printed a full page, color version of the Gaming Map, which I hung in my room during our game design unit. I went out and found the book, and the level of detail and perspectives is pretty intriguing in lots of ways. Slovakian artist Martin Vargic (who is only 18, if I have my information right) is behind these maps, and his first map of the Internet went viral a few years ago.
What I love most of all is how the maps turn our view of the world as a piece of geography into something different. The world takes on many layers when we see a vision of the globe spinning in different themes, with different data, with different perspectives. This really is what maps can be about, if we allow ourselves to dream of the world in different ways.
I have hung the Map of Sports and the Map of Music in my room, and my students get their faces close, reading the fine details with wonder, and I appreciate that the book has some larger, fold-out maps that one can take out of the book itself. I would bring the book in, but there are some maps that are just not appropriate for the classroom.
Peace (here are the coordinates),
Kevin