A World in a Drop of Water: Exploring with a Microscope (Dover Science For Kids)

If you are buying your child a microscope and would like beginning techniques, you will find nothing here.The book is sub-titled "Exploring with a Microscope." However, the book never mentions one thing about microscopes or preparing cultures or slides for the microorganisms found in the book.The LAST SENTENCE of the book is, "An d if you have a microscope, or can borrow one, you too can be an explorer in this strange unseen world." Borrow a microscope? No experience? Good luck with that! This book will not help you.The pictures are great. The rest of the book is useless. The authors probably made a lot of money from a dishonest title.

I take full responsibility because I did not pay attention to the product information when ordering. 1969 was the year this book was copyrighted and the contents testify to this. I bought this for my 8 year old grand-daughter to use with a microscope I purchased for her for Christmas. I will buy her a more updated book.

This really is an interesting and very, very helpful first book on what a child with a microscope can find in a jar of pond water. Alvin and Virginia Silverstein keep the text informative and simple and don't oversimplify or make it dull. There's a brief description of Leeuwenhoek's discovery of microscopic life, a chapter titled "Let's Go Hunting" to get the interest flowing and then sections on the common things found in a jar of pond water: amoeba, paramecium, algae, euglena, rotifers, hydra, and flatworms.This book is about collecting and looking at specimens - it is not meant to be an instructional book on the mechanics of a microscope.Throughout the book, there's a good quantity of black-and-white photos of each of these microscopic animals and they were obviously taken with a professional high-powered microscope - so the kids who use this book might be a little disappointed that they can't see these animals with such magnification or clarity - but I suspect that most kids will be perfectly fine with this.I think this book would be a good buy for a child from about 7 to 11 years old. It should really whet their appetites for using that microscope!

An excellent book to get my kids started on exploring the tiny world - and the perfect excuse for us to start using the used microscope I picked up last weekend!We've seen tardigrades, nematodes, spirogyra and water fleas so far! Many more to come as we get through this book and build our water-world id chops.

I was looking for easy to understand books about the microscope for my 10-year-old granddaughter. This one would be adequate if the paper wasn't so flimsy and the pictures were more clear and in color. Very disappointing. It's well-written, so I'll use it, but the quality is bad.

This was a very informative book. I bought it on the recommendation of another Amazon review when I bought a microscope for my elementary-aged daughter, and I am glad I did. It gives a lot of context to what she is looking at and things she can look for. The only improvement I would wish for is color pictures of the slide samples. The pictures are all black and white. The photographs, however, are off good quality and really sparked the interest of my seven year old

Product was better than advertised. Super fast shipping and very well packaged. Super price and would definitely recommend to anyone..

Bought for 8 year old boy (bought him AmScope MICROSCOPE 40X-1000X Dual Light Optical Glass Lens All-Metal Framework Student Microscope + Microscope Prepared and Blank Slides for Christmas) to keep his interest peaked. Mission Accomplished!

This would be an excellent book if the images were in colour rather than dreary black and white and if there was some attempt to indicate the sizes of these creatures.

The media could not be loaded.  I'm SO pleased I bought this. It was thoroughly engaging for my bright 7 year old but would also satisfy children up to 12. I enjoyed reading it too. We got the microscope out and found many of the featured creatures living in our pond, most excitingly rotifers.

Black and white illustrations but the text is fairly engaging for a book about paramecium and amoeba written for children. Along with our microscope, there’s loads of learning to be had here for this home-educating family.

Written for children but suitable for adult as a starting point. American book but same or similar in UK. Good book for beginner.

A simple introduction to a fascinating world for the young enquiring mind. My grandson is five and a half, and found it most interesting. He can't handle a microscope properly yet. All in all most suitable to introduce the microscopic world.