First Science Encyclopedia by Dorling Kindersley
| First Science Encyclopedia by Dorling Kindersley | |
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| Category: Children's Non-Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: An excellent first reference book which will sit proudly in the classroom library and comfortably on a child's bookshelf. Highly recoemmended. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 136 | Date: June 2017 |
| Publisher: DK Children | |
| ISBN: 978-0241188750 | |
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I wasn't introduced to 'science' until I was eleven and went on to senior school: I wasn't alone in this, but it really was too late. Thankfully, times have changed and children at primary school are getting to grips with plants and animals, atoms and molecules and even outer space from a very young age. What's needed is a good, basic reference book which will introduce all the subjects and give a good grounding. It needs to be something which would sit proudly in the classroom library and comfortably on a child's bookshelf. The First Science Encyclopedia would do both well.
There's a sensible introduction: science is the search for truth and knowledge. We see how science has advanced since the fifteenth century, what it's like to be a scientist and see the different types of science. We need to know the point of it too: there's a brief introduction to how science affects our daily lives, from electricity through to bullet trains in Japan. Then we get to understand how the book works. All the sections are colour coded, so you only need to look at the colour bar along the bottom of the pages to see which section you're looking at. It's not just a blank bar either: there's a question at the bottom of every page and the answer's at the bottom of the opposite page, only upside down.
At the beginning of each section there's The Picture Detective, which will get you searching through each section for the answers and Turn and Learn tells you where to look for more information on a subject. Some pages even have weird or what buttons, which give additional weird and wonderful facts. So - it's nicely pitched at anyone from five years and upwards, but even at many times the target age there was still plenty to interest me. So, what's covered?
The subjects are neatly divided: Life Science, Materials Science, Physical Science and Earth and Space Science. In each section you get a good grounding. Life science, for instance, covers, as you might expect, the living world - micro life, fungi, plants and plant reproduction, animals and animal reproduction, inheritance, bones and muscles, blood and breathing, digestion, health, food chains, ecosystems, staying alive, the earth's cycles and the carbon cycle. The concepts are all simply explained with appropriate vocabulary. It's a wide coverage, but each subject is covered in a double page spread with excellent illustrations so it is only an introduction to the subject. There's inspiration there though, and encouragement to look further. It's the sort of book which enthuses as much as it informs and encourages exploration.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
If this book appeals then we think that you might also appreciate The Street Beneath My Feet by Charlotte Guillain and Yuval Zommer and Exploring Space: From Galileo to the Mars Rover and Beyond by Martin Jenkins and Stephen Biesty.
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You can read more book reviews or buy First Science Encyclopedia by Dorling Kindersley at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy First Science Encyclopedia by Dorling Kindersley at Amazon.com.
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