Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Amazing Animals by Design

I was recently given the opportunity to review Amazing Animals by Design. This children's book is an adorable yet educational story by homeschooling mom Debra Haagen.  Debra is a military wife and mom of 4 and fellow TOS crew member!



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This story follows children John and Sarah and their parents as they visit the zoo.  This is not just about  typical zoo animals with  elephants, giraffes and zebras. It also has other animals you may have never even heard of.  (Visit Debra's website for actual pictures of the animals used in the story.) Amazing Animals by Design includes lots of facts about each of the animals and how they are designed.  For instance, we learn why an elephant has a trunk, why a zebra has stripes and much more.


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Do you know what animal this is?
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Sarah
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John



The illustrations in Amazing Animals by Design are soft and inviting. They seem well suited to younger children (pre-school to maybe 4th grade depending on your child.)








It is refreshing to have a book about animals that acknowledges that God is the creator and designer of animals and that he also made us (in His image.) While the book introduces the idea of intelligent design, it clearly points the reader to God as the creator. 

I received the pdf version of this book to review.  We read it on a laptop and an iPod Touch.  I think we would prefer a "real" book because the text and animal illustrations are not on the same page therefore when I was reading it the kids, they couldn't see the picture the text was referring to. (Maybe there is a way to do that but I couldn't figure it out.)

You can purchase Amazing Animals by Design at Tate Publishing as a paperback for $8.99 or a digital version for $7.99.

 I received the pdf version of this book to review.  We read it on a laptop and an iPod Touch.  I think we would prefer the actual book because the text and animal illustrations are not on the same page so when I was reading it, the kids couldn't see the picture the text was referring to (maybe there was a way to do that but I couldn't figure it out.) There is a way!  If you purchase the digital version you can view the book in a two page format by clicking on view and choosing that as an option. (Thanks Debra for the tip!)

author Debra Haagen
You can find Debra on the web, on facebook, on her blog or her review blog.

Read what others are saying about Amazing Animals by Design on the TOS crew blog.
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disclaimer: I received a free pdf copy of Amazing Animals by Design in exchange for an honest review.

2 comments:

Noteable Scraps said...

Thank you for your review! Just FYI, in your reader program, you should be able to look under your "View" options and find something about "two page view with cover page." That will line your pictures up with the correct page. If you let me know what software you are using I can try to find out the exact commands.

Karen said...

I got that to work on my laptop. I read it in ibooks on my iPod touch but I don't think 2 pages will work on that because it is so small. I updated my review to reflect the new info! Thanks for the tip!

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