Happy Infinity Day! The Official Big Book of Infinity Cover Reveal and Q&A

Boy, I just love the math-related holidays we’re getting these days. First there was Pi day (3.14) and now we’ve Infinity Day (8.8) as well. And what better title to celebrate today than this upcoming dive into the infinite?

So, true story, I’m walking with my kids on the streets of London last week, and the conversation turns to childhood one-upmanship. You know when you’re a little kid and you you get locked into a verbal competition where ultimately one kid will say “Infinity!” and the other kid says something like “Double Infinity!”? My 15-year-old and 12-year-old were laughing about this, and then suddenly the conversation turns to a very serious discussion of whether infinity is a number or mental construct and if you really can calculate something beyond infinity. I didn’t really have the answers to their questions on the subject… but maybe next year I will.

The Big Book of Infinity (published by the same team who created The Big Book of Pi) is the work of creators Anita Lehmann, mathemagician Jean-Baptiste Aubin, and artist Joonas Sildre. Of course we won’t actually be able to see it until its publication date, May 18, 2027, so in lieu of that, today we’re speaking with Anita AND Jean-Baptiste AND Joonas about the creation of this all-encompassing title, and what it takes to make the infinite comprehensible to kids. And after that? We’ll take a gander at its cover:

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Betsy Bird: Anita! I appreciate you answering my questions here today. Tell me a little bit about the origins of THE BIG BOOK OF INFINITY. It’s a massive topic, and one that kids are rightly obsessed with. Yet I’ve never really seen a nonfiction book tackle the idea head on. Why is that, do you think, and how did you come up for the concept and layout of your title?

Anita Lehmann:  Hi Betsy, delighted to be here :-). So, infinity…Where to begin? You are right, it’s a huge and endlessly fascinating topic… 🙂 

First of all, as a child, I remember being told that two parallel lines meet at infinity. I mulled this idea over and over in my head, trying to make sense of it, and to be honest, it still puzzles me to this day…Much more recently, I learned that infinity comes in different sizes…and that if you take parts of infinity, they can be equal to the whole of infinity…Mind-boggling stuff!

Then, there is the philosophical and religious element…The sheer awe of staring at a night sky and wondering about the vastness of the universe …

Then, there is the history… As a historian, I love researching how big concepts such as infinity have been explored over different time periods and cultures. Infinity has occupied our human imagination for millennia, and while the ancient Chinese and Indians wholeheartedly embraced it (and did some spectacular math with it as a result…), the ancient Greeks found the concept of infinity so disgusting they tried to discard it completely. This, in turn, influenced mathematics in Europe for centuries…

And even after so many years of exploring the concept of infinity and even with the amazing computers we have today, we still really know next to nothing about it…

In that sense, The Big Book of Infinity should really be called The Tiny Book of Infinity!

The Big Book of Infinity is actually the second book in a series about math for children. The first one is called The Big Book of Pi…

BB: And Jean-Baptiste? What was your experience?

Jean-Baptiste Aubin: After working for many years in research and teaching, I became increasingly involved in mathematical outreach because I wanted to share the beauty of mathematics with a wider audience.

After writing a first comic book about the number π with Anita and Joonas, infinity felt like a natural next step. It’s one of those ideas that fascinates everyone, regardless of age. Children encounter it very early: “Can you count forever?” “What’s the biggest number?” “Does space ever end?” These are wonderfully deep questions that even mathematicians continue to explore.

I think it’s important to introduce children to infinity because it teaches them that mathematics isn’t only about finding answers—it’s also about asking good questions. Infinity invites imagination and critical thinking. It shows that some ideas are so rich that they challenge our intuition, and that’s one of the most exciting aspects of mathematics.

BB: And, as you just mentioned, you two also worked on with illustrator Joonas Sildre. Joonas! Let me redirect the question to you now. What was it about this manuscript that iintrigued you or made you want to work on this with Anita?

Joonas: Infinity appealed to me because it is one of those subjects everyone has thought about sometimes in their lives, usually as a child. I remember traveling into the cosmos in my mind, trying to find the end of it, and almost getting lost.

We had also already worked together on The Big Book of Pi, so Infinity grew out of that somewhat organically. During the making of the first book, we started calling ourselves a “dream team” – not out of pride, but because we noticed how well our different ways of thinking and skills fit together. Finding the right subject still took a while. We went through several possibilities before we landed on infinity, and it immediately felt like something we could do a lot with. Pun intended.

BB: Let’s talk about that team. Anita, working with Jean-Baptiste, what did he bring to the project that you needed to make it the best possible work?

Anita: Unlike me, Jean-Baptiste is a mathematician and the brain behind both the Big Book of Pi and The Big Book of Infinity. He convinced me to do this! I’m a historian by training and a very reluctant mathematician. So, it’s really thanks to Jean-Baptiste that these books exist at all…It’s also thanks to him that I have started liking math as a subject. I spent most of my life believing math probably wasn’t for me…but as it turns out, math is for everyone! Both The Big Book of Pi and The Big Book of Infinity are all about making math accessible to reluctant young mathematicians…as well as feeding the imagination of the nerdy ones!

We’re a great team in that Jean-Baptiste will patiently explain really complex math over and over again, so that I can then go away and write about it in a fun and accessible but also precise and accurate way. 

BB: On that note, Jean-Baptiste, tell me about some of the challenges that come with trying to make some of these concepts not only comprehensible to kids but clear and concise. What’s your general attitude for making this information palatable to younger readers?

Jean-Baptiste: The biggest challenge is that infinity is counterintuitive. Many of its most beautiful properties seem impossible at first: some infinities are larger than others, you can remove infinitely many objects without changing the size of a set, or a full hotel with infinitely many rooms can still welcome infinitely many new guests.

BB: Along the same lines, was there any concept that you might want to have included but it just didn’t fit in this particular book?

Jean-Baptiste: I would have loved to explore more in details (even if we wrote some pages on them) ideas such as fractals, infinity in geometry, the role of infinity in calculus, or how modern physics deals with infinite quantities. The history of infinity is also full of fascinating characters and philosophical debates that deserve much more space.

But every book has to find the right balance. Rather than trying to be exhaustive, we chose to focus on the questions that naturally arise in a child’s mind and to leave readers wanting to continue the journey.

BB: Joonas, some of these concepts must have been a challenge to render visually. What were some of the more difficult areas that required a bit of creativity on your part?

Joonas: The main challenge for me was getting away from the standard ways maths and science are usually shown in schoolbooks (also getting out of my own prejudices), while keeping everything clear, informative and fun.

Part of my job was, I would say, to loosen up the reader, show things from a different perspective. Sometimes a character is all you need. The busy beaver is a very complex mathematical concept, but in the book he becomes an actual beaver, chewing his way towards numbers so large that nobody can ever work out how large. 

 And some people’s brains tend to shut down when they see a lot of numbers, so I always looked for a way to make quantities visually appealing and use them as part of an illustration or a comic. Numbers as a snake, or a building, or broccoli – why not?

I have to admit I don’t love maths quite as much as Anita claims – sorry, Jean-Baptiste – but I love the challenge of illustrating it, and I’m also fascinated by all kinds of fringe scientific topics. Taking something abstract and finding a visual way to show it is exactly the kind of problem I enjoy. Infinity offers no shortage of those…

BB: Let’s get into those visuals a little more. Anita, did you have a clear cut sense of the design and layout when you working on it? How much did your initial outlines or drafts of this book resemble the final product?

Anita: It’s hard to find the bounds of infinity…and a structure to a book that has so many different angles to it. There are so many aspects to be explored, as obviously infinity isn’t just about math, it’s also about philosophy, religion, history, and physics (as in time an space)…It makes us question everything, from the smallest particle to the size of the universe. 

I had to reluctantly cut some really fun historical anecdotes and we had to take some tough decisions on what mathematical elements we could meaningfully explain when it comes to abstract math, as well as the concept of different sizes of infinity…But we’re definitely keeping the jokes! 🙂

BB: Along the same lines, Joonas, while working with Anita and Jean-Baptiste, were there ever times when you’d create the art for a section and they would have to correct it from a mathematical standpoint?

Joonas: We usually talk about the script, the math behind it and some of the visual ideas in video meetings before I start on the illustrations. My favourite moment is when Jean-Baptiste grabs a pen and paper and starts drawing numbers and diagrams to make something understandable for Anita and me.

Anita and I are often in the same boat when Jean-Baptiste says something completely “out there” – we shake our heads, and then he knows the only way forward is to put it on paper. He is very good at simplifying complicated ideas, which of course shows how deeply he actually understands the maths.

In that regard, what really impressed me with the topic of infinity was that even Jean-Baptiste admitted with some theories that these are too big for him. During those moments, I felt really small.

Then Anita does her magic and turns all of that into a beautiful flow of text. Her writing is so full of life and energy that it makes drawing the themes almost… easy. I can’t quite pinpoint how it happens, but if I have text in hand that gives me, let’s say, mental energy, the illustrations seem to grow out of the text on their own. The livelier the writing, the livelier the image.

So I take all of that text and start turning it into layouts, designs, and illustrations that make sense to children. Of course there are moments when something has to be adjusted mathematically or contextually, but that is part of the process. Again, sometimes we needed to have calls to clarify things and brainstorm. Sometimes there’s a comma missing, sometimes I misunderstood what the difference between this and that particular infinity is. But visual discoveries and problems we solve together are hugely rewarding when I finally have it on the page.

BB: Speaking of which, Anita, tell us a bit about how the art of Joonas fits in with the larger overall themes of the book?

Anita: Apart from the fact that it’s really rare to meet an illustrator who also happens to enjoy science (and math in particular!), Joonas has this spectacular gift of making a text about hard math read like a comic book. I just love the way he brings our texts to life. 

Good illustrations are way more than simply adding a layer to a text, they take a text and fly with it and bring it to a whole new level…This makes the book itself into something more than the sum of its parts, if you know what I mean? And with science books, illustrations definitely help to explain complex concepts. 

BB: Along the same lines, Jean-Baptiste, was there any concept that you might want to have included but it just didn’t fit in this particular book? 

Jean-Baptiste: I would have loved to explore more in details (even if we wrote some pages on them) ideas such as fractals, infinity in geometry, the role of infinity in calculus, or how modern physics deals with infinite quantities. The history of infinity is also full of fascinating characters and philosophical debates that deserve much more space.

But every book has to find the right balance. Rather than trying to be exhaustive, we chose to focus on the questions that naturally arise in a child’s mind and to leave readers wanting to continue the journey.

BB: If kids read this book and want to continue to learn more about the subject, where would you recommend that they head next? 

Jean-Baptiste: The first recommendation is simple: keep asking questions! Mathematics grows from curiosity.

There are many wonderful popular mathematics books written for young readers, as well as interactive museums, science festivals, and mathematical activities where children can experiment with ideas for themselves. Exploring reliable educational videos as YouTube channels 4blue1brown or M. Steven’s Vsauce for example can also open new doors.

BB: Beautifully put. Finally, what else are you two working on these days? What’s next for you?

Anita: Thank you for asking! I have many plans, and one of them is to write the third book in this math series, which would be THE BIG BOOK OF ZERO…All about… nothing!  Joke aside, Zero is fascinating due to its strange properties. Just like with Infinity, weird things happen when you try and zero-in on zero, mathematically speaking…Also, the history around it is really interesting, as for example the ancient Greeks and Romans had no concept of zero, but in India, they did. I’ll see if I can get Jean-Baptiste and Joonas on the case for a third round of nerding out on the weirder aspects of math!

Joonas: I am currently finishing another book for Helvetiq, a children’s book about fairness, justice and law written by Valeria Aloise. Not a much smaller topic than infinity, I have to say.

For the past five years I have been slowly working on a comic book with the Swedish professor Gregg Bucken-Knapp, about migration and diaspora. Some ideas need time to mature, and we are finally happy with it. It won’t be as heavy as it sounds – but we are not treating the subject lightly either.

I am also working on several language-learning comics for students whose first language is not Estonian (anyone up for learning some Estonian and joining the 1.5 million people who speak it?).

Some books keep me happily occupied for years after they are finished. I still travel and give talks about my graphic novel on Arvo Pärt, Between Two Sounds.

I have recently signed a letter of intent for a graphic novel in a similar vein – a biography of an American who played a part in some international intrigue. An out-of-the-box topic, let’s say. The project has everything except small practical things like a publisher and funding.

Last but not least, if Anita and Jean-Baptiste really do start on The Big Book of Zero, I’m already in.

Jean-Baptiste: There are still countless mathematical ideas that deserve to be shared through stories and illustrations—from probability and voting to geometry, symmetry, and mathematical magic… But, in life, you never know, and as said one of my former professor: “future is a surprising thing”…

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And now, let us stare into the infinite together, my children:

Big thanks to both Anita and Joonas for these last-minute answers to my questions. Thanks too to Ellen Myrick and Emma Schneider for helping to put all this together as well as to the team at Helvetiq. The Big Book of Infinity is, as I mentioned before, out May 18, 2027, so you will just have to be patient until then.

Filed under: Cover Reveal, Interviews