Pictures would have added to it...

The audiobook Scotland Fun Facts: Kid Kongo Travel the World Series, Book 10 by Kid Kongo, narrated by Mike Norgaard is only 8 minutes long, but surprisingly enough, it is filled with quite a bit of information! I am a high school teacher, and I imagine it to be similar to something a student would have quickly put together based on research found online. It is a bit on the "dry" side, but it does contain a few "fun" facts or pieces of information. I wanted to hear this book so that I could use it to show my own students what is meant by "fun facts" when it comes to doing their own country reports in class. Unfortunately, I did not hear anything that was interesting enough to be used as an example. It does, however contain all the basic, factual information one would expect when learning about a country. Here is a list of some of the topics covered in the given order presented:
-Location
-Capital
-Meaning behind the name
-How it became a country
-Sports
-National Symbol
-Weather/Climate
-Legal System
-Education
-Food
-Traditions
-Population/Race
-Health Care
-Life Expectancy
-Military
-Animals and Wild Life
-Transports
-Languages
-Author Info
It is only throughout a couple of the topics, that a fun fact is thrown in here and there. Personally, I would have organized the information differently. I would have grouped together some of the above topics, rather than how they were introduced to the reader. The text seems to go back and forth with information. For example, I would not have placed info about the largest city and population at the very end. Instead, I would have put it at the beginning when the location and capital were introduced so that the reader can get an idea of the size of the country before learning about sports and traditional foods. It is just personal preference, though, and others may feel the organization was fine.

Narration: I noticed that on Amazon the reviews for the ebook are poor. People state that the book is filled with grammar and spelling errors. If that is true, then I have to assume the narration by Mike Norgaard saved this audiobook! I have not read the ebook or print book. I have only listened to the audiobook. Unless the book has been edited for the large amount of mistakes, I have to assume that while Narrator Mike Norgaard was reading, he was also correcting the grammar mistakes as he went. I did not hear anything grammatically incorrect that took away from the text, whatsoever. I would have given him a 5/5, but I did feel that even at normal Audible speed, his narration was too fast for a child/teen to grasp all the necessary information and make it stick. However, everything else was right on! He was easy to understand and was not dull or dry, as some of the information presented was. If this audiobook was used by my students to take notes, for example, I would imagine they would ask me to push stop so that they could "catch-up" and get the info down (due to so much info being presented so quickly), but they would not have to ask me to stop because they were not able to understand what was being said by Mike Norgaard. I would say that the narration is the best aspect of this book, and unfortunately, the only original and fun part of it all.

Overall, I gave this audiobook a 3. There wasn't any new and exciting information that couldn't be found by searching online, but it did include a few pieces of info that I didn't know before. I think it may receive better reviews if the author decided to include a PDF of pictures to go along with the text, especially since this book is meant for kids. Giving them something to look at as they listen, helps them understand the information better, and makes things much more interesting. I see that some of the other books in the Travel the World Series by Kid Kongo are 20-30 minutes, so maybe I will give one of them a try in hopes that it is not just fact driven. I do, however, plan to listen to more books narrated by Mike Norgaard. I'm interested in hearing more from him. Thank you so much for reading my review! I hope it helped. :-)

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!