Posted by Reya on 5:43 Sep 18
I ordered some of these used for use with a preschooler, and my shipment just came in. I was very startled at how TINY they are!
The books are 32pp. long with 16pp. of full-color, very attractive and pertinent photographs. The amount of text, though, is miniscule. There aren't even 32 full sentences per book! 20 is much closer. The books themselves are MAYBE 5" by 4.5". The photographs are lovely, and the information is solid (as much as I have read), but the quantity of info per book is very low for a cover price of $4-5.
Even though they are very attractive and solid factually, then, they're good only as very small supplements and certainly wouldn't be worth the money to me new. They're better as library check-outs than new purchases.
Let's-Read-And-Find-Out Science has illustrations rather than photographs, but the series has much more information and usually presents concepts (rather than heavily being factoid-based) very well for the same price. I think most parents would get much more mileage out of them.
Gail Gibbons has also written many books for the same audience that have the same sorts of slants as the LRAFOS series, and she has been praised for her very clear and simple presentation of complex topics. I'm not wild about her artistic skills, but I do think her books are very clear, and many kids adore the illustrations.
For more advance kids or for more detail, Seymour Simon's books (note: frequent evolution references) combine the gorgeous picture/factual text with a great amount of detail, especially for the targeted age group.
More for more advanced kids: Eyewitness Juniors and Eyewitness Explorers pares down the classic DK Eyewitness format, simplifying both the text and pictures so that it's appropriate for a younger audience and so that it's less distracting, too.