You Could Look It Up : THE RANDOM HOUSE CHILDREN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA; (Random House / A Dorling Kindersley Book: $60; 644 pp.) : THE KINGFISHER CHILDREN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA; (Kingfisher Books: $29.95; 780 pp.)

I am interested in pyramids, forests and wildlife, and I look and read the information and the pictures in both of the encyclopedias, and I found more information and better pictures in the Random House Children’s Encyclopedia. The Kingfisher Children’s Encyclopedia did not have a lot of pictures and the information that I wanted to find. I like the Random House better because it has more information, more pictures and more details, like the places you can find lions, and skeleton, how they survive, how many kinds of lions there are and other. But I did not find the information listed above in the Kingfisher Children’s Encyclopedia.

--Andranik Toumasian, age 14

Kingfisher: My favorite animal is a cheetah. I looked it up and it wasn’t there so it’s beginning to bother me. I do like the pictures, though. It has many things you can look up and they don’t use big words that kids sometimes don’t understand. It doesn’t say much about countries and I think that’s important. It doesn’t have enough on my country Guatemala. I would like to see more history on Guatemala like about the Mayas.

Random House: I love the illustrations in this dictionary, especially the illustrations on the gun, it shows how the guns work, I have wondered about that and now I know. It has the most nicest pictures of horses. I think it’s cool that there is this kind of dictionary around where there is much more definition to the subject. On a scale from 1-10 I give it a “10.”

--Maria Lopez, age 13

My opinion is that the Random House encyclopedia is very very interesting all young adults to have I wouldn’t mind having on my shelf. But some of your pictures are too small and the words are too.

The Kingfisher Children’s Encyclopedia is very interesting to but in a way it seems very very boring I like that it talk about AIDS but they could at least put some things down for AIDS and food too. My opinion is that the Kingfisher is a very nice book but I wouldn’t recommend anyone to it I wouldn’t mind having it just for decoration but would not use it.

--Princess Rodgers, age 13

Random House: I looked up Castle, I think the picture was beautiful and the book even showed and say which room is what. The book even say the best place to put a castle. I think this book was marvelous and how people live and what they do in the castle.

Kingfisher: I looked up Castle. I really like the picture. It was beautiful and realistic but it didn’t tell which place and which place is. The book only say about what people do and army fighting wars.

--Thuy Thi Phuong Tran, age 12

Kingfisher: I like the illustration on fishes and it tells you some of the fishes in pictures and names. But I don’t think there is enough writing on their history.

This encyclopedia is easy to read because the words are Big and dark.

Very little information on countries all over the world.

Random House: Found airplane under Air Forces. Not enough pictures and there is no diagram on an airplane showing all the parts in an airplane.

This encyclopedia has good pictures of continents but very little pictures and information on foreign countries.

--Ngurah Agung, age 14

Kingfisher: I like the picture which was comparing asteroid and part of London. I like the article about China because they gave an example, which is the language of China and it showed the history of China in order with years. The article about Leonardo da Vinci was also interesting because Leonardo’s famous painting, the Mona Lisa, was really mysterious and Leonardo’s self-portrait was really nice.

Random House: At the beginning this book has information about how to use this so everybody can learn more about the subjects. And if you want to know more about the article there is a little box which is labeled “Find out more” at the bottom of each page. At the end of this book, the Random House, there is a fact finder about history, and the world, nature and science. They both have index.

--Chong Lee, age 14

Kingfisher: I think this book is good for kids. For example, if you want to know about tigers it gives you the information you need like what do they do all day, how do they hunt and much more.

Random House: They didn’t have tigers inside. They had it under lions. Thats not good. It should be under the letter “T”. The information it gives on tigers is very short. It has more pictures than “The Kingfisher.” I don’t think you could get the information you want in “The Random House.”

--Armen Bayramyan, age 13

I would like to see more motorcycles--all kinds of motorcycles. I’d like to read more history about the guy who invented them.

Random House: I think this is a real good book for adult people. They should make the same book for real little kids. They should have cartoons for kids to enjoy it more.

--George Flores, age 13

Kingfisher: I looked up navigation, the definition was a little long, but it finally got the point across.

--David Grover, age 14

In my opinion the random house children’s encyclopedia is a great book for children to use if they get stuck on they’re homework. . . . But one fault about this book is that there is less subjects than the king fisher encyclopedia. For example, if you look up Mexico you would see that the random house has two pages on it and the king fisher has one paragraph. The random has nine pictures while the king fisher has one, but if you look past mexico you would see more subjects following that the random house doesn’t have.

--Lisa Solorzano, age 12

Random House: The best thing I like about this book is that it doesn’t make me want to close it and never open it again.

Kingfisher: The thing I liked about this book was that the beginning of each letter was printed in big letters so that I know that a new letter has begun. Another thing was that it had symbols after each word to help you find entries on a similar theme.

--Rhodora Sealana, age 14

Kingfisher: I looked up dinosaurs, it gave me alot of information the pictures tell alot how they lived where they lived what there called and what they look like. It told me what they ate and how long ago they lived.

Random House: I think this book was more informative than the first. It showed more live understanding pictures. It showed bone structures in fossils and how high they would be compared to us.

--Jose Amay, age 12

Kingfisher: This encyclopedia is very easy to find what you are looking for. Anyone from the age of eight to the age of sixteen can use this encyclopedia.

Random House: This encyclopedia contains enormous information. The illustrations on countries and animals are extremely good. Some subjects are hard to find.

--Abner Balsells, age 14

Kingfisher: This encyclopedia is fun and easy to use for kids in elementary and they would enjoy it.

Random House: This would be a bit hard for kids in elementary school to understand some words.

--Susan Kim, age 14

The Random House is good to use for history and other subjects. I think the dates that are given are important information and the history of the country is important to know. This book has a lot of information about the spice trade and space flight and space shuttle and all kinds of information.

--Tamara Kodzhanyan, age 13

Random House: It has colorful maps, it talks about a lot of different cultures. It has a lot of facts about animals, plants, countries, people, places, and food. It even talks about the religions of different cultures. It’s apparently everything that a student would want to know.

Kingfisher: I’m not as fully satisfied with this encyclopedia. It didn’t have any information about my country, Armenia. It has information about Russia, but not about Armenia.

--Mary Dautian, age 15

Kingfisher: The kind of encyclopedia I’d let my little brother get a hold of. Its picture of Columbus’ Santa Maria describes its mast right down to the nails and splinters.

Random House: Far better than the above, for 2 reasons: more history, which is always exciting, and a lot more writing space provided for each word.

--Jason Brannon, age 14