ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PLANTS, FUNGI, AND LICHENS: FOR YOUNG READERS — Review

Thought for the Day:

“Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.”

~ Kurt Vonnegut ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

We all want to keep our readers on the edge of their seats. That’s how we keep the pages turning. HERE is an excellent post on Writers in the Storm by Laurie Schnebly Campbell about how to do that.

HERE is an interesting post on Writer UnBoxed by Heather Webb called Add a Little Spice to Your Storytelling: Unique Structures and Framing Devices. It has some good ideas.

Janice Hardy always has such good content. HERE she discusses how to write good fight scenes in her article Put Up Your Dukes: Crafting Dynamic Fight Scenes.

First of all, I won’t be here next week. I am taking a road trip to Albuquerque,NM to visit my sisters. My oldest sister recently moved from her large house to an apartment in a senior living center. Going from 3000 square feet to 650 square feet means there are things to be handed down to the next generation. I am going to pick up a few things for my kids. After I leave there, I will head north to Montrose, CO to visit my son Mark and his wife Cindy. I haven’t seen them for a few years, so I’m really looking forward to that visit. Whether or not I am here the week after will depend on the weather and how tired I am from my trip. This week I have been happily wallowing in a bit of schadenfreude with the antics of the crazy republicans in Congress and also during the first Dodgers game in the playoffs. Someone must have whispered, “It’s October,” into Clayton Kershaw’s ear. He ended up with a 162 ERA for the first round of the playoffs this year. Holy smoke!

I am trying to catch up on some good middle-grade picture books I have reviewed over the last year, books that deserve to be talked about but ones I never seemed to get around to posting. I found the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PLANTS, FUNGI, AND LICHEN: FOR YOUNG READERS by Thereza Nemcova and illustrated by Tomas Pernicky on the list of review books for the Portland Book Review. I must say, when I saw it, I thought of Sue Heavenrich and her wonderful science books. I loved her book, FUNKY FUNGI (my review HERE, in case you missed it), and I thought I would enjoy this one as well. I was not wrong. Here is the review I wrote for PBR.

While the word “encyclopedia” in the title of this book might be slightly misleading, it certainly is an excellent introduction for youngsters to the wide subject of plants, fungi, and lichens. Each spread in this oversized book introduces a particular segment of plant life (there are twenty-two segments), such as Meadow Plants or Succulents & Cacti or Non-Flowering Plants or Poisonous Mushrooms.

Most of each spread is covered by a wonderful rendering of nine representative plants. They are not of photo quality, but they are quite realistic and detailed, giving readers a very good idea of what the subjects look like. For all of the nine plants shown, there are short paragraphs laid above and below the central art panel, in most cases, that give just a few sentences telling about the subject plant.

The writing is not formal, but actually quite friendly and welcoming to young readers, inviting them to get a taste of each segment before they go on to do more research on their own, which they are sure to want to do.

This is a book that will be read over and over as youngsters learn more and more. It’s a winner.

Please don’t forget to check for other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at Greg Pattridge’s blog HERE.