Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Pick Me Up
Nonfiction
For ages 9 to 12
DK CHILDREN, 2009 ISBN: 978-0756655334
Sometimes we hear about something that captures our interest and we just have to learn about it. Someone tells us about their pet cat, and we realize that we don’t anything about cats. When did people start to keep cats as pets? In this book, you can look up cats, using the index at the back, and you will find out that the ancient Egyptians domesticated cats in 4000BC. Then you think that you might like to learn something about the ancient Egyptians. The cat article has a page reference for the ancient Egypt article so that you can find it easily. Turn to page 100 and you will find out how the ancient Egyptians “tried to live forever.”
Many of us develop interests in topics that then lead us to other interesting topics, just as the cat article led us to the ancient Egyptians article. This clever reference book allows us to do this jumping from subject to subject thing with ease. It works a little like the Internet, but it has a hidden asset. If you know that you want to find out something new, but you don’t know where to start, you can just open the book and see where you end up. You are sure to have a wild ride.
If you know that you want to find out about something in particular, you can use the “Where to find stuff” section, which is found at the beginning of the book. A list of topics in each category will allow you to choose which article sounds interesting.
This is the kind of book that is rather addictive. You will look for one thing and end up hopping from topic to topic without having any idea of how much time is passing. The topics covered are often surprising, and the information is presented in clever ways using sections of text, illustrations, maps, diagrams, and more.
