nerd teacher [books] reviewed a is for ant by DK Publishing (The Animal Alphabet Library, #1)
It's... meh.
1 star
I usually go through these books to try to find things that might interest students, and this one was... not a hit? And that's not surprising to me because of where it comes from. When I start seeing these books coming out of DK, I always instinctively cringe but still try them just in case; their books often are the ones that kids bring to me from their schools and complain about because they're so boring (trite, common knowledge, etc), so it's pretty understandable that even the ones aimed at the youngest readers aren't well-liked, either.
Another thing I don't like about DK books is this (from their Wikipedia page):
Most of the company's books are published with "DK" named as the author, as they are produced by teams of editors, designers and cartographers who work with freelance writers and illustrators.
It seems peculiar to me that somehow these kinds …
I usually go through these books to try to find things that might interest students, and this one was... not a hit? And that's not surprising to me because of where it comes from. When I start seeing these books coming out of DK, I always instinctively cringe but still try them just in case; their books often are the ones that kids bring to me from their schools and complain about because they're so boring (trite, common knowledge, etc), so it's pretty understandable that even the ones aimed at the youngest readers aren't well-liked, either.
Another thing I don't like about DK books is this (from their Wikipedia page):
Most of the company's books are published with "DK" named as the author, as they are produced by teams of editors, designers and cartographers who work with freelance writers and illustrators.
It seems peculiar to me that somehow these kinds of books would not just be attributed to their writers; I struggle to understand how this book was produced by more than three people (two writers and an illustrator), but it also reads like something that was written by consensus and without the actual target audience in mind.
DK has always had this problem where their books don't read like they're for anyone; they just exist to fill a niche for teachers in an inoffensive way.