Adventures with a Hand Lens

Rating:
Summary: Introduction to the use of a neglected tool--the magnifier.
Review: It has always annoyed me that toy shops are full of cheap microscopes but few good magnifiers. Children are more interested in that range of things which are a bit too small to see by eye alone, but too big to put on a microscope slide. Mr. Headstrom here provides a set of 50 "adventures" using an ordinary magnifying glass or hand lens to examine many of Nature's small wonders. It is a brief but detailled guide to the study of insects, flowers, and seeds, with occasional visits to the slimy side of nature; snails, leeches, and the like. Some of the adventures are for the shoreline, others merely to the backyard or nearby pond, but all are fruitful, well-described, and illustrated with line drawings. The book is a reprint of the 1962 edition, but is only charmingly dated. The language is a bit stiff for younger readers, but it would be an excellent guide for the parent/child team of explorers.