Customer Reviews

Big Cats

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4 star:		(1)
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Seymour Simon's book "Big Cats" is wonderful introduction for children to the world of the big cats. Children will love the huge, full-colour photographs of these gorgeous felines as they learn about lions, leopards, tigers and more. Written in terms that the young can quickly comprehend, this book presents interesting insights into these cats of the wild and makes learning about these animals a delight.

Seymour Simon has consistently interesting early childhood nature/science books for childern. This is another example of a topic sure to intrigue the most die-hard video game addicted first grader. This will hold the interest of most boys. Very good information and pictures on he big cats, African lions, cheetahs, tigers, etc. Good educational tool to help children to put all the pieces together of animals they already have some knowledge about. Teachers and parents can use the pictures as a springboard for children's artwork. Nice book, like all of Seymour Simon books that I've seen.

As a teacher I'm always on the look out for books that my boys will like. They love animal stories like this one and Seymour's alligator book.

You would be mistaken if you think big cats cannot purr. They can. But not all big cats can roar. In fact, three cannot roar: puma, cheetah, and snow leopard. The seven "big cats" are tiger, leopard, lion, jaguar, puma, cheetah, and snow leopard--and they all purrrrrrr.

Seymour Simon provides interesting facts like this in his two or more-page spread about each Big Cat. Let's go back to those roars for a moment. When a lion roars, creatures (including people) can hear that roar up to five miles away. No wonder we show extreme respect to that magnificent animal.

I once read a customer review on Amazon concerning another of Simon's animal books. The person stated that captions for each picture would be nice for her and her child. What I discovered in "Big Cats" is that each animal is the focus of two or more pages: one is a photograph, the other is a page of information. Why is a caption necessary if an entire page is about the photo? I think she wanted something quick per photo. If so, Simon's Level I readers still do not have captions, but they do have just a couple of sentences per page--in essence a caption.

What I find with Simon is that once you have read one of his books in a particular series, you become attached to his writing. Simon is an excellent science writer of every kind of science and writes mostly for elementary children. "Big Cats" is written on a fourth or fifth grade level. The back of this book says he is author of over 100 science books for young readers. Actually, that was 1991. In 2007 he has over 200 books to his credit.

Here are some things you will learn in "Big Cats": the leopard likes to drag his kill up a tree for safe storage from other predatory animals. There is a photo to prove it. A cheetah works alone, uses his burst of speed up to 70mph, eats as much as he can right then, and leaves the kill because he is too exhausted to guard it. A cheetah is the only big cat without large canine teeth and often loses cubs to predators because she has difficulty defending them.

One of the many things I appreciate about this book is Simon's fierce dedication to animal and habitat preservation. His last page is devoted to this topic through its young readers. Raise up a child the way it should go....

Whether it is purring, killing, raising young cubs, losing its natural habitat, Big Cats have much in common. According to Simon, it is up to us to make sure they continue to have an existence.