Book Review: Animals of the Rain Forest: Capybaras

Animals of the Rain Forest: Capybaras by Alexandria Manera
Steadwell Books
This is one of a series of Animals of the Rain Forest books.

Book Type: Non-fiction, quick overview
Ages: 6-8

The range map in this book is probably its best feature.

Synopsis:

This book has 32 pages of large type that include the following chapters:

• Range Map of Capybaras
• Quick Look at Capybaras
• Capybaras in teh Rain Forest
• What Do Capybaras Eat
• A Capybara’s Life Cycle
• The Future of Capybaras

Each section is a quick overview of 1-2 pages including a photo or diagram.

Owner’s Review:

The cover photograph is quite nice but most of the interior photos are not high quality.

The good thing about this book is that it doesn’t present any information that is wrong. The bad thing is that is that it is boring. I think it’s boring even for a young kid. For example, “A capybara’s habitat has a lot of water. A habitat is an area where a plant or animal usually lives.” Sure that’s informative and I understand that you have to explain the vocabulary to young children but couldn’t it be done in a more interesting way? There are numerous instances of this type of explanation.

Caplin’s Review:

I was too bored to listen to most of this book but I did find this sentence amusing: Some people believe that their [capybaras’] careful grazing helps to preserve their habitat. Those wild capys must be way different than me because I am not a careful grazer! Unless by “careful” you mean I only eat things that taste good and only as close to the roots as my big snout will allow.  I do make a decent lawnmower according to my owner.