Joy Masoff

Oh, Ick! by Joy Masqff is a fantastic science book for kids! It has such a large variety of science and written in a language that kids get. It has many, many experiments that you can actually do and have the stuff for around the house! They are gross, slimy, stinky experiments, but fun to do and kids will love them. I had fun just reading them. The book also has great pictures and funny illustrations. Some of the subjects include insects, mummies, spit, toilets, viruses, worms, zits, poop, show more sinkholes, scabs, stitches, awful eats, boogers, blood, fossils, fungi, guts, bacteria, arachnids, burbs, farts, earwax, and icky ice cream. All of it has fun history, interesting tidbits that made me laugh, and gross stuff that made me laugh too. I learned from this book also! I am definitively going to buy this book for my grandkids! It is a long book so it will last kids a long time. I received this book for a honest review. show less

I have translated the book for publishing in another language, so I got a very detailed knowledge of it and double-checked many facts the author uses.
I liked the idea of the book - it sells history to kids in a way that certainly will appeal to them.
However, it has a number a bloopers and outright flaws. I will list all incorrect data I've encountered, so that you be aware. some of them are trivial factoids, yet others are more serious stuff, in need to be corrected. I have also discovered show more that some of the passages match corresponding articles in Wikipedia verbatim. Which inspired which I am not sure, but complemented with several horrible mistakes, these coincidences make me suspicious.

- The guy who invented hard hats was E.D. Bullard, not E.W. as the author states.
- In chapter on Dracula she incorrectly mentions years of life of Countess Bathory (1560-1613), while all encyclopedias list 1614 as her death year.
- in the article on Edison and light bulbs she calls Wilson Swan William.
- wrongly says that Joachimsthaler is named after a city in Germany, while that city is/and was/ actually in Czech Republic/Bohemia.
- She ridiculously claims that Napoleon's misfortunes in Russia from the onset resulted from cold/frosty weather there. The guy crossed into Russia on June 24th with months of fair weather ahead of him...
- She confused German Saxony with British Wessex in chapter on Queens...
- Indian Uprising happened in 1857, not in 1875.
- In The Titanic drama she touches on the story of The Empress ship, which, she writes, sank a few weeks after The Titanic. Yet it actually sank 2 YEARS after The Titanic's tragedy!
- She invented a King for England - Charles VIII, apparently confusing him with Henry VIII. And goes on elaborating on his exploits, stubbornly calling him Charles.
- While listing nationalities of Allied soldiers, who were in trenches of the WWI she mentions even the Canadians and Belgians, but omits the Russians, who lost millions in that war and were one of key forces of the Allied Entente effort.
- Talking about an ancient Chinese zoo, she managed to confuse 1000 AD and 1000 BC, which resulted in her spurious claim that the event was only 1000 years removed from us, while in fact it was 3000 years away...Quite a difference IMHO. show less

Although this is a series book published by Scholastic, I found it interesting, full of colorful photographs, and interesting information like how to make bricks. The information is easy for elementary students to read and has facts that will definitely keep them reading. "What should I wear today? Probably not underpants!" I actually used this book in a colonial project I had students work on in the classroom. It was a great supplemental book to use in social studies. I really liked the show more living history photographs in the book because students could get a better understanding of what the stocks, colonial clothing and houses were like. show less

This book is filled with realistic pictures from different living history sites such as Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown. The use of colored photographs depicting how the colonists really lived and worked are appealing to young readers. This book is a Scholastic reference book, so it targets younger readers by having titles such as "Across the Sea of Gloom" and "I Feel Sick!" as headings for the different sections. The text is broken up on the pages by colorful photography centered show more around the heading of the section. Each section begins with a "hook" to peak the interest of the reader such as "Feeling a little hungry? In America's early days, food was serious business. Men killed for it, stole it, and guarded it like gold." It also includes inserted information the reader would find interesting like "The Witches of Salem" and information about "dunking stools." Although the book focuses on early life in the colonies, it does not include information on free Blacks living in the colonies or on slavery. It does include a website for students to visit if they want to learn more about this topic. There are not many reference books/materials listed at the end of the book. It is a short, interesting view of what life was like in the early colonies, and could be used as a supplementary item in the classroom because of the pictures and simple text. I did like the addition of "The truth?" section in the book which told the other side of Pocahontas's story- she was held hostage and taken advantage of. I wish the book was longer- only 46 pages of mostly photographs. show less