The Sassafras Science Adventures: Volume One: Zoology

by Johnny Congo and Paige Hudson

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1935614207
• ISBN13: 9781935614203
• Release Date: June 2012
• Publisher: Elemental Publishing LLC
• Length: 314 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.7" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Full of errors, inaccuracies, and unnecessary content

This book seems to have been written without any sort of editing or quality control. It has typos, grammatical errors, and awkward phrasing liberally strewn through every chapter. The science portion is limited, clumsily stuck into the otherwise ridiculous story line, and has not been fact-checked. It feels like the authors did a quick Internet search and scan of articles to supply their 'facts.' Did you know elephant herds have a dominant bull rather than a matriarchal system? Or that cacti (& pretty much nothing else) is found in Egyptian deserts? How about that bees and wasps are the world's pollinators? (Wasps aren't exactly pollinating extraordinaires, though they do a little, but I feel there are a FEW more critters out there - even wind! - that do their part, too. Then the plot is beyond crazy - if well-written, maybe I could look past it, but it's utterly mediocre. This book could be easily trimmed to about a third of its overly-long length and be the better for it. Also, there is life-or-death drama CONSTANTLY. I have no idea why anyone in the story would ever like science, since they are perpetually in danger from the animals. I like to champion the less-loved creatures, but this book plays on every animal fear out there. It also has totally unnecessary bad characters and situations - in the second location, the village children are kidnapped, tied together, and forced into labor for their captors, who then stand around taunting them. Really did not sit well with me! Looking ahead I'm seeing more bad behavior and rude name-calling coming up. Not sure I can keep going, though we've considered starting a points system for catching mistakes. Yes, it's THAT bad. I have no clue how I've seen so many positive reviews for this so-called curriculum online. I definitely can't recommend it, even just for the amount of typos alone, which are so distracting.