National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of Why Author: Visit Amazon's Amy Shields Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1426307934 | Format: PDF
National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of Why Description
Review
“Highly photographic and playful, this big book is an adventure in exploration and will make long car rides seem like a quick trip around the corner!”
–Woman of Many Roles blog- Age Range: 3 - 7 years
- Grade Level: Preschool - 2
- Series: National Geographic Little Kids First Big Books
- Hardcover: 128 pages
- Publisher: National Geographic Children's Books (May 10, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1426307934
- ISBN-13: 978-1426307935
- Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 9.9 x 0.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
This book is attractive and engaging. However, in some places, it is sloppy, and in others just plain incorrect:
1) Skin does not wrinkle due to water seeping into skin: it's actually a nervous system response (people with reattached digits do not have wrinkly skin). This is a fairly recent, cool discovery, so I'll give them a pass on getting this wrong.
2) "Why do I have dreams and nightmares?": the answer given is that your brain is still active and makes movies of a jumble of experiences. The brain is active all night, but dreams only part of the night. There are various hypotheses for the reasons dreaming happens (i.e., to help organize thoughts), but as far as I know there is no consensus on the answer yet. It IS clear, however, that it's not a simple consequence of the brain being active.
3) There's a diagram accompanying a discussion of how toilets work (explanation given is gravity moving waste out of the home). There's a cross section of a house with pipes, and a red arrow shown going down from the level of the toilet out. However, the only pipes shown are inflow pipes (water leading to a hose, faucets, shower, etc): the outflow pipes (drains, bottom of toilet, etc.) aren't shown. The diagram implies that water flushed out a toilet ends up in your garden hose.
4) "Some dinosaurs could fly and some could swim": Pterosaurs could fly, mosasaurs and plesiosaurs could swim, but these weren't dinosaurs (but it's a common mistake, one worth being careful not to perpetuate). Birds are a kind of dinosaur, and some of them can obviously fly and swim, but readers aren't going to think of birds, they're going to think of pterosaurs.
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