Editorials
School Library Journal
Gr 5-8- One of the few multivolume frogs left in the elementary school print-reference pond, this latest annual edition offers full measures of quantity-more than 9000 articles, 25,000 color illustrations, in excess of 1300 maps, nearly a million index entries, a full suite of cross-references and other access tools, plus special features such as passages from classic books or documents and an entire article of science experiments. The set also offers relevance, in that it pays close attention to curriculum needs. Though current enough to include mention of Benazir Bhutto's December 2007 assassination and the Newbery and Caldecott winners from that year, the overall pace of revision is rather slow; the most recent title mentioned in the "Contemporary Film" section of "Motion Pictures," for instance, is Disney's The Lion King (1994), and at least two of the five generic photos that open the "Baseball" article are more than 15 years old. Still, as the layout will be more inviting to less practiced readers than that of The World Book Encyclopedia (2007), and most of the illustrations are not available through the online version, this will be a good choice for smaller collections with an edition more than five years old, or for classrooms with limited Internet access.-John Peters, New York Public Library