Big Battles of World War II

Gr 4–6—The books in this set open with two true or false questions (a signature of this series) that are answered in the text. Divided into four to six chapters, the titles focus on one aspect of each subject. A "Big Truth" chapter and a "True Statistics" page add interesting facts about weapons, armies, or statistics. The content is standard for middle-level books on World War II, and large black-and-white period photos appear throughout. Unfortunately, this series is marred by some weaknesses. There are few maps and no documentation of numbers and statistics scattered throughout the texts, and there are several errors (for instance, Battles mistakenly states that the Battle of the Bulge resulted in more deaths than any other battle, and both Weapons and Navy erroneously explain the tailhook mechanism on aircraft carriers. This set doesn't improve on extant World War II coverage, and most libraries will find other series to be better choices.