Mountains and Deserts

Christine Linge MacDonald, a past director of the Toronto & District
Parent Co-operative Preschool Corporation and a freelance writer, is an
elementary-school teacher in Whitby.

Take an oversize glossy picture book, add double foldouts, and the
result is yard-long posters featuring panoramic views of life in some of
Earth’s most fascinating habitats.

Mountains and Deserts introduces the reader to the subject before
revealing the spectacular four-page foldout. In the first part of the
book, each of the pages in the foldout depicts a different type of
desert habitat—the desert basin, the lowland desert, the desert
valley, and the upland desert—cleverly shown in one continuous sweep.
Each habitat is then explained in detail on the following pages. Lovely
drawings show the diverse flora and fauna, with explanatory captions.
The second part of the book starts with a vertical foldout to better
depict mountain habitats—the mountain peak, tree line meadow, mountain
forest, and mountain meadow communities. Again, each habitat is
carefully described on separate pages, and a two-page key to the foldout
facilitates identification of any plant or animal.

Oceans follows the same clever format, presenting a foldout of the
“broad ocean” (tropical coasts, the wide ocean, the continental
slope, and the cool coastal waters), followed by text descriptions, then
a second foldout, again vertical, covering the deep ocean—the bright
surface, twilight zone, deep abyss, and deep ocean floor.

Important and challenging vocabulary words are highlighted and defined
in the glossary. Sturdy paper and binding promise a long life for the
foldouts in books that are “bound” to be popular hands-on learning
tools. Highly recommended.