I'm always torn over series nonfiction easy readers. On the one hand, if well-done they can be very popular and our easy reader section has seen rapid growth in circulation in the last year. Nonfiction is very popular in easy readers and I have a lot of teachers who request these titles. On the other hand...I hate shelling out $20 or more for an easy reader that I feel shouldn't be more than $10 and why can't publishers make them in the normal rectangular format?

Still, I like Lerner and I was interested to see how their new Bumba Books imprint turned out so I borrowed one from a neighboring library to take a look.

The book is a larger square, about 9x9 inches. The background is colorful splotches, some layered on top of each other, some alone. Each spread has a photograph, a short paragraph of text, and some also include questions. For example, The left side of the page is dark purple, with a lighter purple splotch. Inside that splotch is the main text, "Some vets treat big animals. This horse hurt its leg. The vet will fix it." Layered below this is a turquoise splotch with the question, "What are some other big animals vets might help?" The facing spread shows a woman in green scrubs examining a horse's hoof.

The last few pages have a picture glossary of words, a diagram of some tools used by vets, "tool to check heartbeat" is the label on the stethoscope, a brief index, and short bibliography. The photographs show a range of genders and races but predominantly white women.

Verdict: This is perfectly acceptable, even excellent, for series nonfiction and easy reader nonfiction, but I can't help but feel the inner pages will have worn out and the photographs dated long before the binding wears out. How do you feel about library bound series nonfiction for easy reader sections?

ISBN: 9781512414387; Published 2017 by Lerner; Borrowed from another library in my consortium