Seymour Simon's Extreme Earth Records

Seymour Simon's Extreme Earth Records
by Seymour Simon
Chronicle, 2012. 57 pgs. Nonfiction

Kids (and their grownups) love information about extremes, as we know from the library's raggedy copies of the Guinness and Scholastic world record books. This book is filled with fascinating information about what are truly world records, the extremes of our planet. From the deepest (Challenger Deep) to the highest (Everest), from the rainiest (Mount Waialeale, Kauai, Hawaii) to the driest (the Atacama Desert, Chile), Simon takes kids on a tour of what's way up and what's way down on the planet, and throws in lots of extra information about, for instance, the nature of deserts in general, types of lava, how tsunamis form and why the largest ever was so devastating.
. . . Extreme Earth Records is a terrific little book that exemplifies the most appealing aspects of children's nonfiction: it is filled with information that goes down easily, and it likely will make kids want to know more. Plus, there's one accidentally (?) funny spot when Simon recommends that travelers "stick" to the road in Death Valley's heat. ha ha Some fun.

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