One Shelf at a Time - Shelf 2

The middle shelf of the living room bookcase has mostly reference books, padded out with a couple of notebooks, a few catalogues and old genealogy and scrapbooking magazines. There is an old two volume Black's Children's Encyclopedia from my childhood, Kingfisher Encyclopedias (general, history and science) that I picked up cheaply at various times, children's history encyclopedias, a dictionary or two, a Bible handbook, a natural history book and these three ...

The Oxford Children's Book of Famous People ... a very useful reference book for homeschoolers or school-goers. If you want just a couple of paragraphs of readable but not over simplified information about A.N.Other famous person, there is a fair chance you will find it in this book. Opening a page at random, I found Kenneth Grahame, Cary Grant, Ulysses S.Grant, Graham Greene, (Pope) Gregory I and Wayne Gretzky.

The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. I like Usborne reference books, particularly the internet-linked ones. They have enough illustration to suit a visual learner, and enough text to introduce a topic without being overwhelming. The Encyclopedia of the Ancient World is divided fairly equally between Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, with a a couple of pages on early civilizations and a section on Mesopotamia tacked on the beginning. This book, a computer (to look up the links) and some historical fiction titles set in the ancient world, would almost be a complete mid-level course in ancient history. I say almost, as the book's shortcoming is that it doesn't touch on Old Testament history.

Enid Blyton's Nature Lover's Book ... is misfiled on this shelf. I only bought it recently, and it hasn't found its proper home yet. If you live in the UK and want "living" nature books, this one is a must. It is a new (2008) reprint of a book first published in 1944 and later split up into a series of smaller paperbacks. The largest part of the book is a series of fictional nature walks (two for each month of the year), followed by short descriptions of flowers, birds and trees, nature poems - both by Enid herself and by rather more accomplished poets - and a few short nature stories.