Books: General Knowledge – DK Readers and National Geographic Readers

I was at the book store with Hercules trying to kill some time before we went to pick up Aristotle from school when I stumbled across this:

What caught my attention was that the book was written in an engaging story format, yet was still informative about the title subject. Isn’t this part of the criteria of Charlotte Mason’s living books? There are sample pages available for viewing on Amazon’s Look Inside This Book feature. I would have bought the book but at RM30+ for such a little book, it seemed rather steep. It was also the only title available that seemed at all educational. The others were about Star Wars and other popular character fiction.

I went to search Amazon and found a whole series of titles under DK Readers (some educational, some purely for entertainment purposes only). At just under $4 each, it is much cheaper from Book Depository. I confess I went a little nuts and picked up 13 titles for Aristotle. Here’s hoping we can help him broaden his subject interest beyond dinosaurs…

While I was searching for DK Readers on general knowledge topics, I discovered that National Geographic also had a Reader series:

You can use the Look Inside feature on Amazon to get an idea of what the content is like. Unlike the DK Readers, however, they are written factually rather than in story format. Additionally, the topics seem fairly common, whereas DK Readers cover stuff like “First Flight” – the story of the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison: The Great Inventor, and School Days Around the World. Even their books about dinosaurs, like The Big Dinosaur Dig, is not just about dinosaurs but the search for dinosaur digs. It tells us the story of paleontologist Joshua Smith when he went in search for dinosaur fossils in the Sahara Desert in Africa.

Whichever series you choose, they’re both great for getting young children interested in learning about the world around them.

Related:

• The Cat in the Hat Learning Library
• The Magic School Bus
• Horrible Science
• Basher Books
• The Magic Tree House