This is a review of the book See How It’s Made written by Penny Smith and Lorrie Mack.

The Summary

This book takes several everyday products such as ice cream, CDs, t-shirts, crayons, etc. and illustrates the process of how the item is made. The authors take you into the factory where these products are produced and shows you through the use of photographs how each item is made. It can be surprising even for teachers to learn how much work goes into making CDs or apple juice.

The Good

The photo rich environment of the text makes it as realistic as possible. In addition, choosing common everyday items really helps in relevancy for students. Many kids find it interesting to know how pencils and crayons are made. The book is truly engaging at least in a one-on-one situation.

The Bad

The text is small in this book. This would make reading it difficult for younger students. In addition, although I appreciate the photos there are so many jammed onto a single page that it would be difficult to share this book with an entire class. This leaves the book for use only in the class library for individual students. Lastly, kids learn a lot of

Lastly, kids learn a lot of relevant interesting things but there seems to be no overall point to the text. It just a collection of different processes for making things. It is left to the teacher to come up with a reason for reading this

The Recommendation

THis book is 3/5 stars. It’s a great text in terms of the visual stimulus but it can be difficult to read and lacks a sense of direction.