Polar Lands: Kingfisher Young Knowledge

Margaret Hynes (author)

Kingfisher Publications, UK: 2005; 45pp

ISBN: 0753411695

Genres: factual texts, information texts, non-fiction, science

Although this softcover reference book is quite visually appealing and contains useful information for young non-fiction readers, its layout is rather confusing. Most of the information provided relates to the Arctic rather than the Antarctic.

There are also a number of pages where it is unclear as to which habitat the fauna belong. The double page about birds - ‘Flying Squad' - is an example of this. In addition there are several pages where, due to similar colouration of parts of the Arctic and Antarctica, smaller photographs superimposed on the larger double page photos are not clearly identifiable as being from totally different parts of the world.

The text is in 20-30 word paragraphs with extension vocabulary at the bottom of each page - a word that relates to the text on the above pages.