My First Encyclopedia

by Carol Watson

This entertaining picture information book is designed to help children satisfy their growing curiosity about the world around them. My First Encyclopedia is arranged in themes that move from the familiar environment of a child's everyday life to an exploration of the wider world. Learning is fun as lively artwork and full-color photographs combine with clear, simple language to answer the questions that young children ask. Educational and informative, My First Encyclopedia prepares children for the first years of school and encourages independent reading. Developed in consultation with language specialists, an alphabetical index is also included for easy reference.

Genres: Reference

80 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 1993

Reviews

[Brianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the only work of complete non-fiction on my list. I'm not sure that this is the copy that I had growing up or that sits in my mom’s classroom, it looks to be roughly the same though so hopefully it's the same in some important ways. I'm shocked by how popular this book is when students can choose any book, they would fight over it if we would let them. Since this is a book that children seem naturally interested in it might be a good entry point into the 2nd grade literacy standard, "2.RI.5 Know and use various text features (e.g., captions, bold print, subheadings, glossaries, indexes, electronic menus, icons) to locate key facts or information in a text efficiently." I find myself being asked, by kindergarteners, to read "the words under the pictures" quite often; I'm trying to convince them to call them captions. This book perhaps accompanied by a few others might be good to have on hand as students explore a topic. They could be given either worksheets with a topic of their choice and blanks for specific information or asked to write their first research piece. They would do so by using text features to explore the book and their topic.

[SBC · Rating 3 out of 5]

My toddler loves looking through this big, bright kids' encyclopedia, filled with colour photographjsa, bite-sized facts, and hand drawings. The photographic images with people in are very dated (fashion of the 1990s is very different to the now), but there are lots of interesting facts about the world. We usually only read a few pages at a time, but he does love to flick through it.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

A visual encyclopedia with sparse text. For example, in the section "Growing food," the entry for "Vineyards" reads "Grapes grow on vines in special fields called vineyards. Grapes are eaten fresh, or crushed to make juice or wine." A reference to Grapes also appears under "Foods we eat; Fruit."

[Lorna Dounaeva · Rating 5 out of 5]

My five year old loved this.