Antarctica by Tristan Boyer Binns

From the Exploring Continents series and published by Heinemann, 2007.

This book is eye catching with its colour illustrations, the quick facts boxes, titled Did you know?, and its readability. It has a clear contents page, a well explained glossary defining the words that have been typed in bold in the main text and a further information page for recent books and useful websites to refer to. Add to this an excellent index and a double page chart that focuses on a continents comparison worldwide. It provides a general overview that will generate lots of discussion for those new to the topic of Antarctica.

The only qualm I have is that the Sub Antarctic area (Antarctic Peninsula) and the central area of Antarctica have no clear distinctions between the animals that live there and who can visit these areas; in my opinion you need to extend beyond this book to gain a broader and more correct picture.

Reviewed by Fiona

Also, remember that Matapihi now has a brand-new showcase on Antarctica on the Matapihi website
The rich images, movies, objects and texts in the showcase are
drawn from across the collections of the ten contributing Matapihi
partners.