Straight Talk

November 1, 2012

Gr 3-5-Covering a wide range of high-interest topics in science, history, sports, vocations, and avocations, these small volumes offer tight, busy-looking mixes of color photos, present-tense overview narratives, boxed facts, and captions, supplemented by various combinations of charts, tables, interviews, open-ended questions, and, where applicable, recipes. Each volume is capped by a current, annotated set of multimedia resources. The biographies present highly idealized, inspirational portraits of their subjects. Aside from Healthy, (in which the old food pyramid is replaced with the newer MyPlate recommendations), the Straight Talk titles are not quite "straight." Both Drugs and Smoking fail to deliver enough information for readers to come to their own conclusions about the topics. More balanced alternatives to the entries in both subseries are available elsewhere. Otherwise these titles are acceptable choices for both assignment use and casual browsing.

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2012
Grades 3-5 With a greater emphasis on nonfiction in the Common Core Standards, these nonfiction readers entertain while filling a curricular need. Conversational text and absorbing layouts with plenty of sidebars, questions to consider, facts, graphics, and color photos will entice even the most reluctant of readers. Straight Talk: Smoking helps children consider how advertisers lure young smokers, the health risks and expense associated with smoking, the difficulties of breaking addiction, and ways to confront peer pressure. A wide-ranging and appealing series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)