Pond Water Zoo: An Introduction to Microscopic Life

This book affords a youngster (or adult) a gateway to a brand-new world, with its own rules and dramas, right under our noses. In a very readable way, it makes the world discovered by van Leeuwenhoek (the inventor of the microscope) real and accessible to young children and busy adults. Using pictures on every page, it guides the reader through an overview of this amazing menagerie and compares their sizes, then tells how they were discovered, and then reviews each category of creature in turn. It describes the life cycles and the most amazing things about each group. It succeeds in communicating the thrill of seeking and discovering as it explains how to collect or culture these creatures, which are more varied and exotic than dinosaurs, but are alive right now and present everywhere.Our daughter is 4, and is fascinated by the book (though it's meant for grades 5-8). I am unable to buy a copy now that it is out of stock, but I hope that will change soon. This is truly a marvelous book.

This is an unusally readable and yet accurate discription of common micororganisms found in pond water. The organization is by phylogenetic group, the text is not watered down excessively for children, and the ilustrations are accurate without being too complicated for the preadolescent budding scientist. My 7 year old brought the book home from the library, and would not return it. We finally purchased a copy. There are now two jars of pond water on his window sill and a nightly ritual of examining a drop form each, and recording his observations in a sketch book. His sustained enthusiasm is the best tribute I can pay to this book. I hope the authors and illustrators will tackle another area, such as moss, dirt, etc.