Microsoft Explorapedia: The World of Nature

Microsoft Explorapedia: The World of Nature (Microsoft Corp., ages 6 – 10), based on Dorling Kindersley’s Children’s Encyclopedia, gets just about everything right. Tad, your frog guide, based in his “frogship”, will help you find your way through this very rich program. You can get help (spoken) when you need it, and all the buttons take you somewhere coherent. Good facts, tons of hot spots, beautiful videos, excellent stills and animations, songs, and wonderful ambient sounds are packaged with games and activities that build on the information. For example, to answer the questions in “WiseCrackers”, you need to search through different sections of the encyclopedia – a great way to introduce research methods. Because you can have everything read aloud, even kids younger than six (the suggested starting age) can benefit from this title. We look forward to the next one in the series, The World of People. If it’s as good as this one, kids are on their way to building a great multimedia research library.

– May 1995, Reference

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