Katie Dicker

This review appears on my blog, Seasons South and North:

Evans has published a series of four books called Sparklers - Out and About, written by Katie Dicker. They are "designed for young children ready to find out more about the world around them. The books are designed to support and extend the early years curriculum." Sounds a bit dull, but the books are just the opposite.

We have two of the four: Garden and Wood, and they are charming. Illustrated with high quality and colourful photographs to which speech bubbles, flowers for page numbers, and coloured strips for wording have been added. Some pages give facts, while others pose a question:

"How tall is your sunflower?",
"What time of year do frogs appear?"
"How many pine cones can you collect?"
"What different bark textures can you find?"

Clearly, the emphasis here is on encouraging thinking and enquiry, and not just on the memorization of facts. Unusually for such books, every single one of the children actually looks happy (even though, looking at the photo credits, they seem to have been taken all over the world). The close-up shots of the animals will please young children who so enjoy photographs of real animals.
Both books commendably have a table of contents and an index. In spite of each book being only 24 pages long, it is very helpful to have these to be able to begin to teach children how to use them.

These are excellent and attractive early non-fiction books.… (more)