Popular Science Children's Review - Earth (e.explore series)

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Review - Earth (e.explore series) - Matt Turner

This book on the Earth is given an extra boost by being part of the e.explore series, which means it comes with a linked website bringing together the efforts of DK and Google.

More on the website in a moment, but first the book. As you'd expect from DK it's attractively presented and covers everything from the Earth's place in the universe to geology and weather systems. The double page spreads are, as usual, packed with information, but they lack any sense of reading flow. Each "chapter" is really just a collection of illustrations with a one or two paragraph piece of text attached. It's just too bitty to read, but too unstructured to be a reference.

If the book itself was something of a disappointment, there are a couple of nice touches in the website. As well as a series of selected articles to match each page there was the relevant Google directory entry and, best of all clip art based on the book - high quality images as used in the book that you can put into your own documents - for the younger reader these were probably the best bit. It's a bit of a shame that the key articles haven't been kept up to date - there's a section on tsunamis, for instance, but as of April 2005 there was no mention of the great 2004 tsunami.

So, a mixed response. It's not a bad book, but it falls between two stools and is only partly rescued by the novelty of the web features, particularly the clip art.

Also in hardback:

Reviewed by Jo Reed

* Our age range recommendation is an estimated guide, but individual readers outside the range could still enjoy the book!

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