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Get Started: Stamp Collecting for Canadian Kids.
Elizabeth Macleod. Illustrated by Bill Slavin and Esperança Melo
Subject Heading:
Grades 3 and up / Ages 8 and up. **** /4
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excerpt:
Do you want to collect stamps? This book will show you how. Once you get started, you'll see why stamp collecting is the most popular hobby in the world. Become a stamp collector and you'll make new friends, explore Canada and travel the world without ever leaving home.
Stamps hold a fascination for people of all ages. Is there anyone who has
not clipped a beautiful or interesting stamp from an envelope and tucked it
away or put it up on the fridge? Kids Can Press has produced Get Started:
Stamp Collecting for Canadian Kids, a slim, highly illustrated volume full of
fascinating and interesting stamp facts.
The book's organization is logical with each theme being placed on a double page spread. Stamp Collecting introduces a number of stamp facts (including the smallest, the largest, and the rarest stamps), which serve to whet the potential collector's interest. The book proceeds with parts of stamps, tools to use to start collecting, suggestions for choosing what to collect and how to go about it. Bits of stamp history and information on how stamps are created are also included. Definitions of more specialised terms are provided both within the individual sections and the glossary, "More Stamp Talk".
Even though each section builds on prior information, readers need not read the book from beginning to end. Also, there are a few "tips" placed in corners, on yellow backgrounds -- a great idea -- but it's too bad they weren't used more liberally. While Stamp Collecting has an index and table of contents, it is just as easy to browse through the book.
Illustrations, by Bill Slavin and Esperança Melo, add even more interest to this already informative book. A minor quibble - the cover illustration features a collage of the Canadian comic book superhero stamps, and a quick glance (for example when scanning the shelves in the library, or at the local bookstore) might lead a potential reader to believe that the book is about comics rather than stamps.
An interesting and informative book!
Recommended.
Katherine Matthews is a teacher-librarian at the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto.
To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.
Copyright © 1997 the Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission.
Published by
The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364
TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS ISSUE - APRIL 25, 1997.
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