Barbara A. Somervill has been writing for more than 30 years. She has written newspaper and magazine articles, video scripts, and books for children. She enjoys writing about history, science, and investigating people's lives for biographies. Ms. Somervill lives with her husband in South Carolina.
These books break current issues into subtopics, discussing each on one or two spreads that also include a graphic representation of related data online and regular bar graphs, stacked bar graphs, pie charts, time lines, and pictographs. The books are colorful, easy to read, and well designed. Sports is the strongest of the three as the writing is spot-on for the audience. Most importantly, the statistics used are well chosen and instantly understandable, and the text clearly explains how each type of graph can be used to best display different types of data. The weakest title, Immigration, has some confusing graphs and outdated statistics, and makes some sweeping generalizations ("Most immigrants work hard, and they are usually resourceful people"). Crime and Natural Disasters do a good job of displaying data, but some of the subjects covered, such as how money is laundered and the volcanic explosivity index, may be tough for students to grasp. Teachers looking for resources on displaying data using graphs may find these titles useful, but students are unlikely to choose them for themselves.-Marcia Kochel, Olson Middle School, Bloomington, MNSchool Library Journal June 2010-- "School Library Journal"
These books break current issues into subtopics, discussing each on one or two spreads that also include a graphic representation of related data online and regular bar graphs, stacked bar graphs, pie charts, time lines, and pictographs. The books are colorful, easy to read, and well designed. Sports is the strongest of the three as the writing is spot-on for the audience. Most importantly, the statistics used are well chosen and instantly understandable, and the text clearly explains how each type of graph can be used to best display different types of data. The weakest title, Immigration, has some confusing graphs and outdated statistics, and makes some sweeping generalizations (Most immigrants work hard, and they are usually resourceful people). Crime and Natural Disasters do a good job of displaying data, but some of the subjects covered, such as how money is laundered and the volcanic explosivity index, may be tough for students to grasp. Teachers looking for resources on displaying data using graphs may find these titles useful, but students are unlikely to choose them for themselves.-Marcia Kochel, Olson Middle School, Bloomington, MNSchool Library Journal June 2010-- "School Library Journal"
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