Oxford Children's Encyclopedia

When it was first published in 1991, the Oxford Children's Encyclopedia received some glowing reviews. 'I simply cannot fault it,' said the Sunday Times's critic. This praise was in many ways justified, for it was a highly usable, high quality set of books. And yet there were faults. In presenting this completely revised edition, Oxford have acknowledged this and gone a long way to correcting them. This new edition is not simply a cosmetic job. It really is thoroughly revised. Two new volumes have been added. Scores of new entries have been injected, and one in every three articles has been rewritten. Moreover, it has been subtly but effectively redesigned throughout. All these changes improve the Encyclopedia immensely. I was not particularly fond of the first edition which had an old-fashioned look with its rather stolid typefaces and preponderance of uninspiring squared-up agency pictures. It also suffered from the problems that dog many an alphabetic encyclopedia - a plethora of entries so short as to be hardly worth bothering with, and a tendency to cover major topics rather scantily. Oxford have at least partially addressed both these problems. They have sensibly cut many of the less valuable entries and given proper space instead to major topics which are now well covered. A rather meaningless two page entry on Architects in the first edition, for example, is replaced by a fascinating four-pager on Architecture. The writing has also been sharpened up in many places. The design is sharper too. The choice of typefaces, headings, and paragraph spaces and tints has been subtly altered to produce a more elegant look, while the layout is much improved. They have even carefully coloured in some of the black and white artworks. The result, though still not visually exciting, is now at least clean, bright and pleasant to the eye. More importantly, Oxford have clearly responded to criticism that their original selection was too staid and establishment. Articles on such topics as Aborigines have lost their patronising tone and gained a political awareness. 'American Indians' are now called Native Americans and the selection on the American colonies now looks at South America as well as the North. Gone are entries on mythical characters like Beowulf and Anansi. In are 'issue' entries like Animal Rights and Anorexia and longer entries on popular topics such as sport. In the Biography volume, figures such as Aung San Suu Kyi, Steve Biko, Bjorn Borg and the Beatles replace Graham Greene and the Venerable Bede. Jesse Jackson is replaced by Michael Jackson! In the field of science, meanwhile, many entries such as those on astronomy have been updated to take account of recent discoveries such as those made with the Hubble Space Telescope. There are still a few problems and inaccuracies here and there. They wrongly state, for instance, that Acid rain is caused by pollution. (Rain is turned more acid by pollution.) And there are still a number of trite entries. But on the whole this is now a very impressive piece of work. Of course, the Encyclopedia still suffers from all the limitations of an A-Z format. The entry on Atoms is three volumes apart from the entry on Molecules. And if you don't know what the word is for the little bits that things are made up of you won't find the entry. The lack of visual excitement does not really encourage browsing. But overall it is now a bright, up-to-date, unstuffy but authoritative reference work for children. For most topics a child is likely to want to look up, there is an entry here - easy-to-find, short enough to be digestible and hold the interest and now, usually, also long enough to be genuinely informative. The vast majority of the entries are written in a clear, straightforward style that most ten-year-olds will understand easily. At £150, the Oxford Children's Encyclopedia is by no means cheap and may well be out of reach for many schools and parents. But this new edition is far and away the best mid-range children's encyclopedia on the market. Only the massive Britannicas and World Books offer much more information in a single package - and they are much less child friendly.