Settle those Jeopardy battles, do homework, or use this lovely encyclopedia to look up that pesky fact your brain refuses to retrieve. Illustrated with the usual high Oxford quality, clearly written, and loaded with special biography and topic features (including 3,000 biographical profiles), The Family Encyclopedia is a one-volume wonder. Kids ages 8 and older will like its size and heft--just enough to feel substantial, but never daunting.
From Library Journal
Clearly written, impressively compact, and attractively put together, this new encyclopedia digests the world's knowledge in 13,000 brief, up-to-date entries, about 20 percent of which deal with people, both living and dead. Intended for the whole family but "created with secondary school students particularly in mind," the book emphasizes the physical and biological sciences but does not neglect other major subject areas. About 1500 color illustrations accompany the printed text, including some first-rate diagrams explaining scientific principles and phenomena, such as how microwave heating works. The maps, all small-scale, were prepared by a leading cartographer in the United Kingdom. In fact, the work is clearly a British production, from the editors and consultants to the color reproduction firm. On the other hand, its contents are determinedly international, with no apparent British bias. Typically, the arrangement is A-Z, with numerous cross references and no index. Most appropriate for home and school libraries, this small, single-volume encyclopedia competes well with the best in its class, the Concise Columbia Encyclopedia (Houghton, 1994. 3d ed.).?Ken Kister, author of "Kister's Best Encyclopedias," Tampa, Fla.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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