THE AMERICAN HERITAGE SCIENCE DICTIONARY

Gr 5–7—In this computerized age, some people dismiss dictionaries as anachronisms barely worth the shelf space. How wrong they are can be easily seen in this nifty volume. A wide variety of information boxes pop up like succulent raisins in a tasty cake. For example, "A Closer Look" pieces examine topics such as the Doppler effect, magnetic reversal, and iridium; "Usage" pop-ups differentiate between terms students may confuse, such as "revolution" and "rotation"; and biography boxes feature cameos of such disparate subjects as Andreas Vesalius, Maria Mitchell, and Linus Pauling. Diagrams large and small dot the landscape, as do maps and small black-and-white photos. All this is embedded in a solid backdrop of more than 8,000 standard definitions of scientific relevance. This valuable tool is clearly written and often lively, and will no doubt introduce dictionary neophytes to the joys of word-surfing while on the hunt for a specific term.—Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY