Dorling Kindersley Science Encyclopedia

Children's Literature - Marilyn Courtot

The DK Science Encyclopedia is a book that belongs in every home and library. The explanations are straightforward and the illustrations are crisp, clear, helpful and plentiful. The encyclopedia isn't just for kids. Most of us adults don't have science degrees, yet we want to be able to answer our kids' questions reasonably and to find understandable answers to our own questions. I have my own personal copy of the encyclopedia that I use to check out things. For example, I was pretty sure that the skin was the body's largest organ, but not 100% sure. I looked up "Skin" in the excellent index, and the first paragraph confirmed what I thought I knew. I was so intrigued by the information and illustrations that I read the entire entry. Kids will do the same.

School Library Journal

Gr 4-8-Either one of these titles makes a practical alternative to the recent flood of multivolume surveys-the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Science (Macmillan, 1991), the New Book of Popular Science (Grolier, 1990), etc. Both are up to date, hasty but accurate, and the products of about a dozen authors. Both combine crisp, brightly colored illustrations with unintimidating blocks of text printed in various sizes and styles, boxed sidebars and capsule biographies, cross-references, and indexes. In the Dorling Kindersley volume, technical terms, as well as the charts, tables, and formulas, have settled into a large appendix. The articles are not recycled from the ``Eyewitness'' books, although many cover the same territory; they are arranged in procrustean, 30-page, topical groups (``Weather'' and ``Living Things'' receive the same amount of space), written in a breezy style, and supported by plenty of photos and paintings. The scattershot page design favors browsing over sustained study, but the book's now-familiar look will be appealing to readers less practiced in the research arts. Besides considerably greater length (it was originally published in several volumes in 1991), the Kingfisher title offers information in the more traditional alphabetical arrangement, with one to four articles per page. Though less profusely illustrated than Dorling Kindersley, the pictures are often more telling: dramatic photos of a tree killed by ``Acid Rain'' or a bullet blasting through a raw egg (for ``Velocity'') punctuate lucid painted figures, sequences, and schema. Frequent ``See For Yourself'' boxes contain directions for homemade science demonstrations, though they are not indexed, and, caveat emptor!, many are potentially risky, especially since all safety cautions are relegated to a page in the front. Readers with quick or specific questions will find the Kingfisher easier to use, but the Dorling Kindersley presents a more connected view of science's interrelationships.-John Peters, NYPL