In ancient Japan, no one felt safe from the ninja. Masters of trickery, ninja attacked quickly and vanished into the shadows. Uncover the secrets of these clever fighters, including their training, weapons, and missions.
December 1, 2013
Gr 3-6-Interesting and easy to understand, these hi/lo books are heavily illustrated with drawings and a few photographs. They are similar in content to the "Way of the Warrior" series (Scholastic). On closer inspection, it is evident that they are reworkings of Capstone's "Warriors of History" series (2007). While often sentence structure has been changed to make material easier to digest, the information is the same. For example, in Gladiators, the sentence from the earlier edition, "The Romans made slaves of soldiers they defeated in battle," has been changed to "The Romans made slaves of soldiers they defeated." In the newer series, some facts from the older titles have been repositioned in side boxes. A few illustrations are also repeated. The sentence from the 2007 ninja title, "A common ninja mission was sneaking into an enemy castle and setting it on fire," has been reset into a box and rewritten as, "Ninja often snuck into enemy castles and set them on fire." While the reading level is a bit easier, the interest level remains the same. Libraries owning either of the older series, especially the Capstone titles, will be duplicating information by selecting these titles.-Anne Chapman Callaghan, Racine Public Library, WI
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