Allen Keast (1922–2009)

While this is mostly well written and would have been accessible to the target age of children at the time of reading, it is not a book I would give to children today. The science is >60 years out of date, and while I'm not familiar enough with most of the topics discussed to identify how much has changed, there are a lot of topics 'where not much is known' that I suspect would have changed. Also, it predates acceptance of plate tectonics as an explanation of how ecological communities could be spread across multiple continents.

Further: it is all in imperial, which is not something I would give to an Australian child.

Overall, interesting reading as a cultural artifact.

There are reference to Indigenous people, in language that would not be used now, but I don't recall any of the more egregious possibilities.… (more)