For this informational book called United States: Maryland, I gave it a rating of 4 because it is very informative on the state of Maryland, and it includes many useful text features. This book contains facts on the topics of geography, climate and weather, people, cities, sports, and many more (15 sections of information in all). In each section there is a page to three pages in content and it is very informative. I believe that this book would be good for fourth or fifth grade classes, but a teacher could read it to a third grade class. Some of the topics are advanced such as for the history sections: "By about 2,000 B.C., these Native Americans grew corn, peas, squash, and tobacco." The year 2,000 B.C. will be hard for young children to understand because they are very use to thinking in the present, or near future. However, other information is very useful, such as quick facts of Maryland: for example, "Name: Maryland is named after Queen Henrietta Maria (1609-1669); State Capitol: Annapolis, population 36,603; Nickname: Old Line State; State Tree: White Oak." In addition, there are man useful text features such as a table of contents, time line, captions, glossary, and index. This timeline may give a child the first experience for a timeline, and it is very easy to understand will the year and event, and only including 11 events. The index is overwhelming for children, but they should be familiar with an index by fifth grade. ( )

I think that this is a good book. I like this book because the information is very organized. The information in this book is broken into sections. For example, there are separate sections on cities, transportation, sports, entertainment, history, and more. Because the information is broken down into these sections, it was easy for me to understand and organize the facts that were being presented. Also, I like that the author included a timeline at the end of the book. It gave me a quick and easy way to look for information without having to reread through the entire book. For example, if I wanted to know when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge was built, I could simply look at the timeline rather than searching through the book to find the date. The main idea of this story is that Maryland is a diverse and pleasant place to live or visit. ( )