Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Recently, my daughter bought "Big Book of Why" for her eleven-years-old daughters. Fortunately, before my granddaughters started reading this book, I had the opportunity to leaf through it, and I was appalled. I have PhD degree in chemical engineering, and a fairly solid knowledge of astronomy and Earth science, so I concentrated on the Earth and Space sections. Here is my assessment. The author seems to be lacking basic understanding of the above mentioned subjects. Both the Earth and the Space sections are riddled with errors. Many answers are either erroneous, misleading, incomplete or incomprehensible. (I have not read the rest of the book and I do not intend to.) To give the potential buyers an idea, I will list a few examples. Question "Why does the moon appear to change its shape?" is answered as follows: "As the moon orbits Earth each month, Earth blocks sunlight from hitting the moon at different angles. As that happens, different portions of the moon are in shadow." This is pure nonsense, as any five grader would know. "Why can't we see air? is explained as follows: "That's because Earth atmosphere is made of several gases including oxygen, water vapor and carbon dioxide. The molecules of these gases don't absorb light that our eyes can see, so air is invisible to us." Apart from the absurdity of this reply, one wonders whether the author is aware that 79% of air is nitrogen, while it contains only traces of water vapor and carbon dioxide. Some more examples: diamond is called "rock" while chloride and sodium are called "minerals". The temperature of sun spots is given as 3,227 degrees C, while the stratosphere is located at 48.28 km - 80.47 km above the Earth surface (didn't the author learn about rounding off in grade 4?). These are just a few examples out of many. I am also concerned about the haphazard selection of topics. It bothers me that some very marginal topics were covered (for example, canals on Mars, first woman in space, quicksand, sinkholes, three entries on Grand Canyon), while some much more important and interesting topics were omitted (for example, explanation of equinox and solstice, why the length of days and nights changes during the year, how do oceans affect Earth climate, eclipses of the Sun and Moon, what is a rainbow, is there life in outer space). In my opinion it is irresponsible to keep this book in circulation, since it spreads inaccuracies at best and pure nonsense at worst among the very young, impressionable readers.