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Zoobooks

Zoobooks

more product photos

Do your children love the full-color pictures of animals they see in National Geographic, Ranger Rick, and other "wildlife" magazines and books? If so, they will love the Zoobooks. These are 58 different, twenty-page books that are most economical when purchased in softcover editions.

Each one is dedicated to an animal, bird, or reptile, or else to a limited group such as insects, dolphins/porpoises, or birds of prey. Representative titles are Apes, Baby Animals, Camels, Eagles, Endangered Animals, Hummingbirds, Rattlesnakes, Spiders, and Tigers.

Books are heavily illustrated with beautiful photos and drawings. There is not a lot of text, but what there is interestingly written, informative, and appealing to all ages. Each of the books I reviewed features at least two pages on the structure and function of the animal (interesting science lessons here), but like the Usborne books, it breaks the information down into bite-size chunks. Children can read all or part as they prefer. Other topics vary from book to book, but typical are sections on the birth of their young, feeding habits, and where and how they live.

Evolutionary assumptions crop up here and there, usually in the form of "70 million years ago....," but there seem to be far fewer of these than we typically find in other such resources. The Dinosaurs book is likely to be the most troublesome. Zoobooks puts out a separate, ten-book set called Prehistoric Zoobooks, which also poses problems. Books are available individually or as grouped sets.