Volcanoes (My First Discoveries) Spiral-bound – September 1, 2013

Informative and fun - my 5 yr old daughter loves it. Being a doctoral level scientist myself I found the information to be very complete and well-built into linear ‘story’ line for a child’s book.

We have the book "The Egg" that my kids have loved for years, so I decided to buy more of these First Discoveries books for Christmas this year. This one seemed to have good reviews, and my daughter is interested in volcanoes, so I was excited to get it. However, it is a very clunky read - the sentences often seem disjointed, and there are pages where the text is spread out over the pages and you aren't sure where to look first. The first several times I read this aloud to them, I would accidentally read the wrong part first and realize my mistake after it was too late. It ends very abruptly as well. The last two pages mention the ancient volcanoes on the moon, then that "Mount Olympus on Mars is the biggest volcano in the solar system." And then that's it. It's over. There's no "wrap-up", and it feels incomplete. This is also an example of how the book's information is out of order on the page, causing you to read the wrong part first. The moon info is at the top, followed by "volcanoes have been discovered in other parts of the universe as well" underneath, and moves onto Mars on the final page. You can tell what was supposed to be read first because it is larger than the other text, but every single time I accidentally start with the moon stuff first. I guess I need to study each page before I start to read it!Anyway, a lot of people seem to like this book, but it just doesn't do it for me. The kids like it well enough to sit through it, but they forget about it until we suggest it as a nighttime reading option. I would like to try out some of the other My First Discovery books, hoping I'd find one I like more, but these are not cheap, and I don't want to risk it. I guess "The Egg" is going to have to suffice.**One more thing for anyone in case it's useful: the temperatures given are in Celsius, not Fahrenheit. No big deal at the end of the day, but it's really hard to explain to young kids that, yes, it says ice freezes at zero, but according to the way we measure temperature in this country it ACTUALLY freezes at 32 degrees based on the measuring system we use. That explanation is just a lot of white noise to my 5 year-old son, who insists I read it as it is written, and now believes water freezes at 0 degrees. Which is does. But not in Fahrenheit. Which, being American, is what we use. Frustrating.