Exploration Atlas (Atlas Series)

Special Features: Reed Business Information (c) 2004 Gr 3-5-As if deliberately designed for the remainder rack, these pedestrian surveys link a stingy selection of decorative but not particularly informative maps, drab illustrations, and assorted common facts or generalities, sometimes oversimplified, about their respective subjects. Space is a conventional tour of the solar system, interrupted in midcourse by a randomly placed page on planetary formation, and followed by single spreads on astronomy, space exploration, and constellations. Dinosaur opens with an introductory spread containing claims that all dinosaurs were scaly reptiles, and exhibited nesting behavior, then goes on to a tedious tally of specimens found in North America, Asia, and Europe, illustrated with conventionally posed dinosaur portraits clustered around virtually unlabeled views of the Earth that disappear into the gutters. Neither volume offers back matter, beyond brief indexes. Younger inquirers will be better served by relevant "Eyewitness" books (DK) or the likes of Robin Kerrod and Jack Challoner's Atlas of Space (Copper Beech, 2001), William Lindsay's The DK Great Dinosaur Atlas (DK, 1999; o.p.), or any of the plethora of similarly systematic, better-illustrated resources.-John Peters, New York Public Library?