Madam How and Lady Why

My reasons for not reordering from the publisher of this book (Astounding Stories) are for the following reasons :--cover quality : I liked the coating and feel of the cover but the image quality was obviously a low-res picture and noticeably pixelated--formatting : They size of the typeface is fine, but there is very little thought shown as to the formatting of the book itself. This is a very personal preference, I realize that. However, if you are using this book as a part of your home education curriculum, it is irritating not to have chapters begin on their own page. I usually mark with book tabs each week's reading selection and having a new chapter start in the middle of the left side of the page is not conducive to neatly marking it. Again, nit-picky, I know. But a wide education community utilizes this text so that is why I am including it.--illustrations : Herein lies the biggest problem with this publisher's edition. It has *NONE* of the illustrations that are found in the original printing. Since this is considered a 'stretching' book in the curriculum we utilize, it really looses its engagement with students to have the illustrations omitted. I have no idea why this was done.For those looking to save money, this publication is not the answer. I will now be re-buying this book, but from a publisher I know produces quality work, Living Books Press. And with so many books proving counterfeit on this platform, I highly recommend ordering directly from LBP. I regret not doing so beforehand, and now am paying double to fix my foolish choice to try and save a buck.

I'm a home schooled 6th grader and I am using this book for science. I really like the way this book is written because the author speaks like he is talking to you. It's not just like a science book that tells you information because it is told like a story. Right now I am reading part of the book where it describes how a piece of mineral, that is in a lava stream, goes in to the soil, is pulled up into the stem of a plant, the plant is eaten by an animal, that animal is eaten by a hawk, that hawk falls in to the ocean and decays and slowly the mineral sinks down, more sand piles on top on of it and is turned in to rock and is eventually melted and is shot out of a lava stream again. This part of the book is so exciting because it is told as if the mineral was a character in a story. This is an example of how this book is mostly exciting stories that are related to science. This is an awesome book that I feel is quite easy to understand and makes a ton of sense. Also, Charles Kingsley is an awesome author. I read The Water Babies, which is one of his books, and loved it. And I'm reading Heroes, which has the greek tales in it and the stories often relate to things you hear about in life and in other books. Get them all!

Living Books Press, an Australian company, does high quality reprints of classics books. If you're in the U.S. don't worry that these are Print on Demand. They are well formatted, do no contain typos and DO contain illustrations.

This is suppose to be a science book, my kids (and I) found it very dry. The facts are few and far between as far as we've read and I don't think they are entirely accurate which in any ways made good discussion. I'm sure theres some good gems in it but it takes a good deal of digging to get there.

I did not like this book because it was confusing to me and talked about random topics after every page (I may be exaggerating a bit).

We used this book for Year 5 of Ambleside Online. It wasn't my son's favorite book, but he didn't mind it. We had many interesting conversations about what was going on in the book. I like the way it presents science and biology in the way of stories and just talking about things. Our greatest moments of learning have been when it doesn't seem like "school".

The book had some interesting parts, but is way out of date.

Lovely, smooth binding. Clear print and black and white images. Nice formatting. So pleased that someone is carefully reprinting these old treasures of literature!

Great book didn't realise it was A4 print. But that's not a big issue. The only thing I would mention is it refers to the reader as a boy. Just something to note. My little girl wasn't please about.