"In Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, things are explained in the style of Up Goer Five, using only drawings and a vocabulary of the 1,000 (or "ten hundred") most common words."
A similar idea from the 19th century: Lucy Aikin (writing as "Mary Godolphin") wrote some children's novels using words of one syllable (except for proper names). There are only so many English words of just one syllable (Wiktionary lists 8626 words [1]), but you can get very far! The writing has a rather robotic cadence, though.
You can read some of her books online, such as "Robinson Crusoe In Words Of One Syllable" [2].
A problem with that book is that while it uses the 1000 most common words, it doesn't use the 1000 most common meanings. Many of the 1000 words are used with somewhat uncommon meanings.
It is a great book, and one of the best tools to teach kids in a fun way I’ve come across. He has a new book coming out later this year too which describes absurdly overengineered ways to solve simple problems. I’m preordered. :)
That's fantastic. Didn't know that he has a new book, for the lazy ones, called "How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems" [0]. Also pre-ordered!
"In Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, things are explained in the style of Up Goer Five, using only drawings and a vocabulary of the 1,000 (or "ten hundred") most common words."
https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/