Tuesday 20 December 2016

Penguins (Animal Families) by Tim Harris #bookreview


Book Review: People love penguins because they are so cute. That's why we have the Penguins of Madagascar, Happy Feet and Pingu. Indeed the first sentence of this book alludes to this - "Penguins are among the most familiar and best loved of any wild birds."

This book contains lots of pictures of cute penguins with some written information about them and is aimed at 6 to 11-year-olds. The language is suitable for this age group being simple, with uncommon terms, e.g. predators, krill, incubate, being explained along the way (although when it gets to the breeding part the words breed and mate are not similarly defined luckily).

There is also a flow to the book. For example, a chapter entitled egg-laying and incubation is followed up by another called bringing up chicks, then another called growing bigger... This follows the life of a young penguin.

On things that could improve this book, it is short at 32 pages so could have been longer (although for the targeted age group you could say it is better to be shorter). Also, pictures of all 17 types of penguin could have been included, and would have been of interest I feel to youngsters (and to me).

But I still found the book interesting, and it would suit readers who prefer to read in bite-size chunks, like young readers. Plus it can be used to introduce penguins as a topic which can then be researched via Wikipedia later.

THIS BOOK IS ON AMAZON UK HERE


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