Earthsearch : A Kids’ Geography Museum in a Book
Cassidy
1994
Submitter: This book is a fun hands on exploration of the earth’s geography. The book has been well used and loved based on its current state. There are several things that make this an awful library book. The first are the removable coins in the back cover. There was an attempt to keep the coins contained with the addition of tape, but clearly that didn’t work very well. Where did those two missing coins go? This book was shelved on a bottom shelf within easy reach of toddlers, so a definite safety hazard. The rice has most likely gone rancid and would make a child sick if eaten. Wrinkled pages and pages that are pulling away from the spiral binding…it’s time to go.
Holly: What a cool book! For a gift or home use, that is. It is a horrible format for public libraries. Between the spiral binding, the tabs sticking out, the bag of rice, and the loose coins, this is about as bad as it gets for public library use.
Even if the rice were still edible, I wouldn’t advise kids eating it and then nothing else for 24 hours just because people in developed countries get less. But hey, anything to rid the country of the pure evil known as childhood obesity, right? *sarcasm*
I literally just weeded that book a few months ago from our collection! Good riddance!
The info on water and air would put Sheldon Cooper in a catatonic state!
Yes, it’s time for this book to go. It does remind me, though, of my years as a children’s librarian. It was always rather heart-warming to find books that had been loved to death.
Well, they got the notoriously easily overlooked Maldives, Malta and Luxembourg, but forgot Kuwait and misspelled “Byelarus”.
Byelarus is an accepted variant.
It must be quite rare. I’d never heard it before and Wikipedia’s article on Belarus has no mention of it in their fairly well cited etymology section.
This is a really fun book for a child. Alas, some of the information is inevitably out of date by now. And, as noted, it’s really not suited to a library.
This is awful the same way popup books and ones with moveable peices are awful. Keep these books at home.
I absolutely love what they were trying to do with the rice, but it’s still a health hazard. I’m amazed the publisher allowed it – it looks like a court case waiting to happen.
I grew up with that book, and it is a fabulous book, but totally an awful library book. I can’t imagine what any library that bought (and kept it–I know sometimes you don’t know what you’re ordering) it was thinking, and ditto 99% of Klutz books.
I owned this too when I was a little youngling! And several of the same series, one of which had a packet of agar for growing your own bacteria colonies. I can’t imagine that would hold up well on a library shelf either.
Anyone who puts THAT in a library ought to lose their MLIS.
There is nothing wrong with the rice as long as it has been kept dry. But I’m surprised there are still coins left. Books with “extras” are poor choices for libraries.
…that rice is 20 years old. You can’t say there’s nothing wrong with food that can VOTE.
I used to love pop-up & “interactive” books as a kid. But yeah, very very short shelf life before those elements start falling apart from (over/mis)use.
And EWWWWW at that rice packet (assuming it was originally more white/ivory colored)
I had this book! And I left it outside overnight once. And it the pages ended up getting all stuck together and looking a lot like the circ copy above. :/