Sunday, February 22, 2015

National Geographic Kids World Atlas - National Geographic

Title: National Geographic Kids World Atlas (Fourth Edition)
Author: National Geographic
Publisher: National Geographic Society, 2013 (Paperback)
Length: 208 pages
Genre: Children's Nonfiction
Started: February 22, 2015
Finished: February 22, 2015

Summary:
From Amazon.ca:

National Geographic's classic atlas for kids is now fully revised and updated, with a reduced trim that makes it easy to carry and easy to browse. Complete with geo-themed games, crosswords, picture puzzles and more, this is the atlas for today's young explorers, as well as the perfect homework reference source.

National Geographic is committed to being the number one provider of the best atlases for young people of all ages. This new edition of the award-winning atlas for kids includes the latest data, newest maps and graphs, a fresh and compelling design, and lively essays about the world and its wonders.

Review:
I've been slowly building my daughter's library, specifically the non-fiction section since we've got fiction texts up to our eyeballs. I always pay attention to what I see kids reading in the classrooms I'm in, and they have been reading the National Geographic Kids line of books more often lately, and I can now see why. So when it came time to buy a good atlas for my child, I went straight to this one, and I'm glad I did.

The National Geographic Kids line of books are great examples of non-fiction texts geared to kids, the same as the DK brand that I always recommend. The few I've seen or bought are incredibly colourful, and have that great strategy of short, peppered bits of text with accompanying pictures and other graphic text, which works great with kids once they learn how to navigate books like that.

This atlas begins with double-page spread explanations of how to read maps and the different types of maps kids will encounter: physical and political. In each section there are maps on climate zones, vegetation, population patterns, and literacy rates, among others. From there come the maps of countries based on regions they're in, like Canada and the USA get their own two-page spreads, but Mexico and Central America are grouped together, the same with the Balkans and Cyprus, and Northern Africa. So each country doesn't necessarily get their own page, but they rather zone in on regions. I was pleasantly surprised that they split Russia up into the European part and the Asia part though. Each countries individual stats are shown at the end of the book with their flags, so at least that was included somewhere. I also liked how they had a section on the oceans as well. There's also digital content as well via the app you can download (scan the pages with the app to reveal content or view online).

Recommendation:
An excellent atlas for kids, though I wouldn't recommend it for beginning readers due to the vocabulary, more for 8-year-olds and up.

Thoughts on the cover:
Fairly straight-forward, and I'm impressed that it isn't overly juvenile either.

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