Sharks

November 1, 2012

Gr 2-4-As overviews of certain animal types, these functional volumes suffice, but their scope is too wide for their 24-page boundaries, making them poor choices for research. (Scavengers, for example, discusses vultures, hyenas, opossums, cockroaches, and crabs.) Prosaic writing is interspersed with chatty asides ("Guess what?" in Frogs), and sometimes questionable information ("Because many [sharks] are so strong and fast, they have continued to survive long after the dinosaurs disappeared" in Sharks). Layouts are sometimes unnecessarily cluttered (for example, of Marsupials positions a picture of a dingo atop a virtually identical picture of another dingo); consequently, photos and maps are sometimes too small to be edifying, and minimal captions don't help. The less common titles (Marsupials, Scavengers) may fill gaps in a collection; the others are supplemental purchases where interest is high.-Amy Rowland, Shelter Rock Elementary School, Manhasset, NY

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.