The Discoverer's Guide to Elk Island National Park

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

The first thing you notice about this pocket guide is that it is
beautifully designed. The first section, covering plants, animals, and
habitats, is made up of Rusty Brown’s drawings, complemented by sparse
text. Each page consists of a small drawing with the colors washing out
to form a pastel background for the text. Blocks of text are often
shaped around the drawings.

The next section, which consists of hiking-trail guides and a
driver’s tour guide to the park, is also visually interesting. On many
pages there are four different kinds of graphics: a symbol or icon, a
map, a photograph, and a silhouette.

The second thing that you notice is the difference in tone and language
between the two sections. The habitat descriptions in the first section
are written with the emotive language of television nature shows.
“Shower after shower descends upon the park until the grasses almost
touch the bellies of the contented elk.”

In contrast, the trail-guide section is direct in language and
matter-of-fact in tone. The descriptions, though short, are informative.
The final section is also straightforward. It consists of an index, park
information, and checklists of plants, mammals, and birds.

While the graphics make this an attractive book, they do not make it a
good park guide. Visitors to the National Parks experience the
environment first hand. They do not need to look at pictures of it. If
they carry a guide, it is for additional information. The information
supplied here is superficial. The plant and animal descriptions are
limited to the one or two most striking details about the species. The
bison, perhaps the most unusual feature of the park, are particularly
short-changed. Each species is described in fewer than 50 words.

The most likely buyers of this guide are one-time visitors. Frequent
visitors will be frustrated by the lack of information. The guide is too
superficial for research libraries, but would be useful in public
libraries with large travel collections and in large school libraries.