Category: DK Canada

Love wine? Then get ready for the Good, Better, Best Wines book!

About Good, Better, Best Wines

While wine snobs are swirling and sniffing expensive wines that are tediously hard to find, the rest of us are just drinking wine. Popular wine. Big-brand wine. Big brands can spell terrific value, but you need to know which bottles to buy. That’s where Good Better Best Wines, 2e comes in. It’s small enough to pop in your pocket and take with you to the store. And it’s user-friendly enough to flip through on the fly.

This book ranks the best-selling wines in North America by grape variety and price point up to $15 (USD). And every bottle listed comes with a color photograph for quick and easy identification, so you can buy and run before getting stuck in a conversation with someone eager to share their vast wine knowledge with you! Of course, you’ll also get other important details, such as what ingredients created each wine, flavor and smell profiles, and alcohol content by volume–but in Carolyn’s relaxed, friendly tone.

My Thoughts

It wasn’t until I reached my late twenties that I began to appreciate a good glass of wine. I think my problem in the beginning was that I had no idea about the differences between the different types of wine and would just randomly choose a bottle based on price. This usually meant I grabbed a wine that tasted sour and was not easy to finish. Over the last years, I have learned to appreciate and develop a preference for specific brands and types of wine. I am in no way an expert but I do know what I like and what I don’t like (I like a sweet, smooth taste with not too strong of an alcohol taste).

This well written and witty guide is the perfect guide book for those who love their wine but by no  means want to be an expert – they want to find a great bottle of wine at the right price point.

Carolyn breaks down everything you ever wanted to know about wine – from just the basics about prices, the battle of the cap to how to get the  most out of a bottle (which fortunately we have never had to worry about as we always finish a bottle once it is opened!). She then dives right into the world of white, reds, rose and sparkling as well as bargain, dessert and party wines. The book is roughly 238 pages long and each two page section carries information on three types of wines. My mind was officially blown at the sheer volume of wine brands she shared! Some of them were familiar but some were new to me. She gives a great background on what each wine tastes and I love how visual her description is (you can almost taste it) as well as sharing pretty neat did you know facts and food pairing tips (although I could have used without the amount of calories in wine – just joking!).

Carolyn has done an incredible job with this guide – she gives you advice that you didn’t even know you needed to know, like how full to make the glass to ensure you can fully appreciate the taste and aroma of the wine and the perfect temperature to serve each wine at. She gives you such a great variety and different price points, I found a few wines in there that I have been hesitant to try but actually did after reading her work, I was not disappointed at all!

You can learn more about this book on DK Canada’s website and purchase a copy of this book here.

Rating: 4.5/5

About the Author

Carolyn Evans Hammond is a two-time bestselling wine book author, the wine columnist for the Toronto Star (syndicated), and a seasoned wine judge.

Over the past 15 years, she has appeared on CNN International, BON TV (China), GoingGlobalTV.com, Canada AM, and CITY-TV; she has been a guest on radio stations all over the United States; and she has written for top publications, including Decanter, Wine Spectator, Wine & Spirit International, The Times(London), Maclean’s, Quench, Taste magazine, and others.

Constantly learning, Carolyn spends much of her time tasting wine, judging wine, and meeting with winemakers to keep abreast of the industry. She’s a longstanding member of the Circle of Wine Writers, holds a diploma from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust in the UK, and earned a BA from York University, where she studied English and philosophy. She has lived in many cities in North America and Europe and now resides in Toronto, where she was born.

Her message is simple: Living well doesn’t have to be pricey or pretentious. It just takes a little know-how—and maybe a corkscrew.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Showcasing dinosaurs at their biggest and best, Amazing Giant Dinosaurs, will be the best introduction into the world of dinosaurs for your child.

About Amazing Giant Dinosaurs

Featuring new colorful artwork and special gatefold pages to show dinosaurs at their biggest and best, Amazing Giant Dinosaurs will delight budding archeologists of all ages. From the tallest plant-eater Brachiosaurus to the sea monster Elasmosaurus and its air-bound flying friend Quetzalcoatlus, this dinosaur book has the largest animals of the Triassic through the Cretaceous periods covered. It also includes remarkable dinosaur records and a comprehensive glossary.

Our Thoughts

This is a beautiful, fifteen page hard cover book that features seven of the top best and biggest dinosaurs that roamed our planet.

Geared towards a younger child (anywhere from three to twelve), the book features bold images that seem to jump off the page. This interactive book features pop up pages that your child will love to pull open and discover even more facts and images of these creatures. Children will learn where and when they lived, what it liked to eat, size, what their name means and key facts about this specific dinosaur. The pages are perfect for little hands that get excited and tend to turn pages too fast as they are also hard and easy to turn and unfold (no ripped pages here).

This is a fantastic introduction to the world of dinosaurs for young children. It will get them excited and ready to learn more about these beautiful, yet dangerous, creatures that walked our planet.

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon and Chapters.

Rating: 5/5

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

A visual and informative exploration of the monsters who once ruled the Earth, Ultimate Dinosaurs explores the prehistoric world.

About Ultimate Dinosaurs

A visual exploration of the monsters who once ruled the Earth, this book explores the prehistoric world through photographic galleries complemented by lively, informative text, making it a delightful reference tool for children and adults alike.

Travel along a conveyor belt to see a prehistoric timeline, piece together the parts of a missing dinosaur at an archaeological dig, or discover the secrets of the Stegosaurus by looking at a close-up of its skeleton. In Ultimate Dinosaurs readers will learn more about the beasts of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Eras — including what dinosaurs ate, how they defended themselves, and what might have made them extinct.

My Thoughts

This large, hard covered book will make the perfect gift for your child who loves everything dinosaurs.

Unlike other books, this book gives you an in-depth look at all aspects of dinosaurs, not only their history and names but also an examination of their bodies and senses. Want to learn more about their skeleton, soft tissues, communication, defensive and offensive weapons and even their hunting as a pack? Then this book is for you!

The book has beautiful images that either fill the page or become part of the story (puzzle pieces of the dinosaurs images in the ‘piecing it together’ section) but the images do not distract from the important written aspect of this book, which I think is so important. This book is covering new and incredible information that you don’t tend to find in a child’s dinosaur book so you don’t want the images to be too distracting.

We loved this book from start to finish, as a family we all learned something new which is so important –  every time you open a book it should capture, teach and inspire a passion. This book does that for children (and adults!), inspiring them to learn more and perhaps take an adventure to your local museum to help them put the whole picture together.

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Key math vocabulary and concepts for young children explained simply in A Visual Guide to Math.

About A Visual Guide to Math

Clear, accessible pictures and diagrams support this first introduction to numbers, calculating, measuring, geometry, and data-collecting, making basic maths skills easier to understand. Packed with key terms and useful tips to help remember as well as practical examples of math in daily life, Visual Guide to Math is ideal even for reluctant kids. Place value, number bonds, multiplication tables, and fractions are just a few of the math concepts explained and reinforced in a variety of ways for children with different learning styles.

Covering everything a young child needs to know, this unique reference book follows the curriculum and provides a strong foundation for math skills through the rest of the school years. A perfect homework help to support children as they take their first steps in math and build confidence.

Our Thoughts

Math is by far one of the most important subjects you can help your child with. Math is all around them everyday, even if we as adults say we never use it. It is also a subject that some children may struggle with, I know I struggled with fractions as a child – I still dread when my eldest comes home with them!

This book introduces key math concepts used in the early stages of school that can assist you as a parent to understand what your teacher is teaching your child AND support their learning at home. I am not going to lie, math has changed a lot since I was in elementary school. There is a stronger emphasis on students learning math vocabulary, which is quite different from the right or wrong that I was used to even in elementary school. While it took me a while to understand why they teach them this way, it makes sense – children need to understand and express math in different ways in order to fully understand and grasp the concepts they are learning. These are the basic math skills that they will need to build on as they get older.

This book covered many of the topics and more that my child learned in grade one – from counting, orders, patterns, comparisons, adding/subtracting, differences, money and measurements. It also contained some topics he hasn’t touched upon yet such as multiplying, division and my dreaded fractions!

The book uses child friendly font and size as well as bright and age appropriate pictures to help explain the introduced concepts. It is written in an easy manner that allows you to read aloud to your child and assist them with each concept. It gives you the why behind each concept and asks if you can see how items are related. You can use these as teaching moments to really ensure your child is grasping the concept. It also contains practice questions that you can work on together as well as using as a guide to create more practice questions.

Math is an important part of your child’s school life and setting them up for success at a young age is crucial. This book is an important guide and resource for parents and children to help understand these math concepts that your child will use throughout their school years. This is an important book to have and use not only as the kids go back to school but throughout the year as well.

You can purchase a copy of this book on DK Canada and Amazon.

Rating: 5/5

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.