Review: 40 Fun Facts, 2 Quibbling Quirks
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 6, 2013
This book was a lot of fun.  I thought it was very appropriate for kids in the 5-10 year old range, and I loved that it was interactive: not just reading, but asking questions with hyperlinks for the multiple choices.  Pick the wrong answer, you're directed to a "sorry, try again"-esque page.  Pick the right answer, you get kudos and an explanation.The only two quibbles that kept this from being five stars:1) The fun facts seemed rather random.  I get that this is a book designed to pique kids' interest, but it still seemed like some "connective tissue" would have done the book a world of good, rather than just being a list of questions followed by the information.2) The questions were given without the information first.  I think this is the kind of thing that will frustrate a lot of kids, who don't like anything resembling tests to begin with (no matter how "fun"), and like them even less when they're thrown in the deep end without being given any test prep at all.  Maybe a better set up would have been to talk about the cool facts first, then do a quiz with fun pictures of the "facts" as the payoff?  That's the author's choice, of course, but for me it didn't work, and I won't be hustling my kids into this without prepping for some discussions of, "No, it's not a test," and "No, it's okay, you don't have to know the answers."Still, the book was interesting and worth those minor hassles.  Good use of pictures, interesting facts, and a fun layout.  I'll pull this out on a "Mom/Dad are we there yet?" kind of trip to soothe the masses.