Both my daughters 12 and 9 loved this book! I babysit and all five of the children loved this book. If you like beautifully captured nature pictures and facts about nature this book is just right for you. Even little little ones like this book because of the beautiful image's.

Run to the nearest bookstore to get a copy of Explanatorium of Nature for your young readers! This book is like a little encyclopedia on living things for elementary-age readers! It starts with cells, increasing in size to algae, germs, mushrooms, molds, and more before moving into chapter units on plants, invertebrates, then fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds and finally mammals. Then, the book finishes with a dozen different habitats around the globe. The photographs and illustrations work beautifully together, and there are enough text features that young readers will be able to get an idea of what is important, even if they cannot read many of the words yet. This book is so well put together I could almost use it like a textbook in my preschool classroom during our weekly science lessons. So grateful to #NetGalley and #DK for the opportunity to preview #ExplanatoriumOfNature - this definitely is a book I'd like to purchase for my classroom!

I absolutely love this book. This is perfect for your little natural science enthusiast. I had an ebook from Netgalley and this is definitely one I will be buying for my daughter. Last year I purchased that huge Smithsonian Natural History book for her, but, as she is just turning 7 that one is still just too much for her. This one has plenty of details, but, is better suited to her age. This one is recommended for ages 8-12, but I feel like kids outside of those ranges could still enjoy this book. The illustrations are just beautiful and it has plenty of helpful information. There are diagrams of plant and animal cell structures, information on DNA and so on. The layout is really nice, if you take a glance at the table of contents you'll see what I mean.
I went ahead and looked at the physical copy of the book in a local store and it's a pretty cool looking book. The only drawback I see with it is that if it is like other DK books, it will fall apart at the binding. They glue back together just fine, but, if your kid reads them to death like mine does you'll end up using glue on the spine or replacing it. It really isn't an expensive book though, so, if you get a year of heavy use out of it and have to replace it then it's still a bargain. Definitely a recommended supplement for the homeschool crowd. It's the sort of book that gets kids excited about biology.

DK Books always sets the benchmarks for children's books, and this one is no exception. This is the perfect book for a a young child that is interested in science, and would help encourage them to go into that field. The photographs are stunning.

A very comprehensive science book for young kids and even for adults. The book is all about living organisms with details explanations on different categories (i.e. mammals, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and etc.)

The illustrations, pictures and text are clear and concise enough to explain complex ideas for young kids to understand organisms and biology. Even for younger readers who haven't been able to read much could still devour the beautiful pictures of nature. A wise investment in my opinion for years to come. Both my husband and I LOVE this awesome little reference book and we are serious about getting a copy to keep. Thanks DK and Netgallery for providing us a copy to review before purchasing.

Makes learning interesting and fun. This is exactly the kind of book I devoured as a kid.

A Surprisingly Thorough, Accessible, and Educational Project

In my experience DK mostly published idiosyncratic but beautifully illustrated travel guides, (loaded with odd factoids and sidebars). Smithsonian books were hit or miss gift shop items, often of the pretty coffee table book variety. But, within the past few years I've seen more and more DK science books, especially for kids, that are truly remarkable. And, Smithsonian seems to have stepped up for its DK collaborations in order to generate works of more substance, with interesting and varied content.

That's what you get here. Remember those science books that followed the World Book style and had alphabetically arranged, illustrated entries about "science"? Heck, in the 60's they were often supermarket featured weekly giveaways. Well, this struck me as a very high end, informative, and entertaining version of that sort of book. Just a lot better produced and loaded with interesting content.

This book purports to cover all of "nature", which basically means it's a survey of every sort of life in every sort of habitat. The publisher has elected to follow a simple but effective outline. We start with "The Basics of Life", namely reproduction, cells, DNA, evolution and classification. That at least gets us pointed in the right direction. Then we travel through the world of "life", from simple to complex. Chapters proceed from microorganisms and fungi to plants, invertebrates, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. We end with a survey of habitats. Each chapter is broken down into a series of one or two page spreads about each type of plant, fish, reptile, and so on. These two page spreads focus on a single example, (say, jellyfish), with pictures and details. This, though, is surrounded by sidebars, graphs, more photos, multi-paragraph sides and factoids, and so on.

That all sounds busy and confusing, but it isn't. The publisher uses clever layout, frames, and changes in font style and size to keep everything looking sharp and accessible. The final result is that while there is more than enough information to fill a traditional textbook, there is nothing text-booky about this. The heavy use of illustration and graphics actually helps with the presentation of the content, which is crisp and surprisingly thorough and advanced.

So, I was very pleased with this thorough and entertaining book, and especially pleased with how well it lends itself to either careful reading or browsing. A nice option for the curious young life scientist.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)