Puddles and Ponds

School Library Journal

Everything changes and not always for the best, according to this book. Readers learn that puddles dry up and ponds do not, that lakes are deeper than ponds and that within puddles and ponds there is life in abundance. Animal life can range from frogs to wrigglers and plants, from the volvox to the water lily. Readers are shown how to make a homemade microscope and a water scope to observe the activity going on in the pond. They also learn how to construct a pond in their own yard. Overall the information presented here is very good, but tediously presented. Two titles that offer similar information much more interestingly (although they do not include the experiments) are William Hopkins Amos' Life In Ponds and Streams (National Geographic, 1981) and Herbert H. Wong's Pond Life: Watching Animals Find Food (Albert Whitman, 1970; o.p.). --Zenata W. Pierre, Portland Public Schools, OR