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Book Review: Tom Brown's Field Guide to City and Suburban Survival by Tom Brown, Jr. with Brandt Morgan

Title, Author & Publisher:Tom Brown's Field Guide to City and Suburban Survival by Tom Brown, Jr. with Brandt Morgan

Length: 267 pages,many illustrations

Print size: fairly small

Other readability issues -

This book is nonfiction and lends itself to being used as a reference for different areas of interest in "urban survival." Approaching the study of hurricanes and tornadoes, electricity or any of a number of other "content area" subjects through this book can help students see relevance in those subjects.

This book is not aimed at children, but sentence length and vocabulary are not complex. The numerous illustrations and diagrams also make the material more accessible, especially to students who think best in three dimensions and are interested in how things work.

Summary: Tom Brown covers topics for survival of possible city/suburban crises, beginning with preparing the body and mind, then understanding shelter, water, heat and light, food, crime, and weather issues; this is followed by a discussion of specific disasters and measures which can be taken to survive each.

Typical words: Typical multisyllable/irregular words - you may want to see how many of these words your students can identify before expecting them to read independently. The context makes the decoding easier because the setting and situations are familiar to most students.