Jennifer Dixon

Most young children have trouble pointing out their home state on a map. Some don’t know where China is. Others have trouble defining “latitude” and “longitude”. Answers to these questions and more can be easily found in “Kids Discover Magazine: Geography,” which acts much like an introductory science lesson on the natural features and characteristics of planet Earth. The magazine supplies a ton of great photos that explicitly display the topic (i.e. African steppe farming, San Francisco’s whacky Lombard Street on Russian Hill, the Mississippi Delta in the Gulf of Mexico, etc.) and includes detailed captions for each photo. But the layout is a bit cluttered and too many things crowd onto one page, which seems to be what happens when the entire study of geography gets crammed into 20 pages. The magazine does not provide a table of contents or an index – a surprise, since its target audience seems to be children in middle school as they would benefit from an easier way to navigate through all the information. With too many different fonts, text sizes, and formats, pages look ill-spread and complicated, reducing the overall attractiveness that discourages readers from drilling down through the all the data. Recommended for children ages 10-12.… (meer)