Exploring Deserts: A Benjamin Blog and His Inquisitive Dog Investigation (Exploring Habitats with Benjamin Blog and His Inquisitive Dog)

Anita Ganeri is an award-winning author of information books for children. Educated at Cambridge University, she has written more than 300 books, including the best-selling 'Horrible Geography' series (Scholastic Children's Books) which won a 2009 Blue Peter Book Award. She writes widely on animals and the natural world. A recent title for Raintree, A Day in the Life of Rainforest Animals: Capybara, has been shortlisted for a Maryland Blue Crab Award 2012. Anita lives in the north of England with her husband, children and assorted pets.

In this entry in the Exploring Habitats with Benjamin Blog and His Inquisitive Dog series, Benjamin and his pooch explore the world’s deserts in all their sandy, rocky, and salty glory. The blog frame is a loose device meant to keep the information feeling current and hip. Thankfully, Benjamin is a pretty interesting tour guide. He and Barko highlight some uncommon features of desert habitats, travel to playas, balance precariously on rock formations shaped by wind, and meet cool characters—creatures like Australia’s water-holding frog. Photos include lovely panoramas with the illustrated forms of Benjamin and Barko comically placed amid the landscape. This charming, weird, and always fun look at deserts provides many interesting facts that are sure to stick with budding trivia hounds—canine or otherwise. Grades 2-4. --Courtney Jones