Name: Desperate Deserts (Horrible Geography)
ISBN: 9780439014816

Anita Ganeri

Desperate Deserts (Horrible Geography)

Kirsten Simkiss

I think it deserves 3 stars out of the 5, mostly just because, while educational, it tries really hard to be funny to avoid anything negative and it kind of just makes you feel a little guilty for laughing.

Desperate Deserts is clearly aimed at a younger generation than me, at age 25, but it's still a pretty cute book. It's a book about deserts. Obviously there are going to be stories about people dying because they weren't prepared to go on expeditions into the various deserts across the globe. But they sort of make light of it through comics and comments throughout the book. It just really weirded me out.

Factually, obviously, the book is probably a little old so all of the techniques mentioned for various things may not actually still be practiced. Science has changed by leaps and bounds on a yearly basis. Still, most of the information is still pretty relevant. They don't actually talk much about Antarctica, but I suppose they probably have a different Horrible Geography book for that.