Jamaica (Country Explorers), by Michael Capek

This particular book was perhaps the most superficial of the ones I read about Jamaica, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.  It covers what other books do, but with less detail and with larger text and a simpler vocabulary.  Obviously, then, this book is aimed at a younger audience.  The fact that it uses some of the same image credits that I had seen elsewhere suggests that the author is aware of the other books that exist about Jamaica and may even have consulted them as a model but arranged the material in a way that was less demanding (here there are more chapters, but they are shorter, for example) and that was aimed at a younger audience that elementary school aged instead of a middle reader, perhaps.  This sort of book is certainly appropriate for personal reading or for an elementary school assignment on foreign countries and cultures if one has to do a report on Jamaica.  For the older reader, this sort of book is certainly not very demanding on its own or interesting as far as its materials go, but it can be appreciated for being a pleasant enough book for younger readers.

This particular volume is 48 pages long and it is divided into a variety of short unnumbered chapters.  The author begins with a welcome, discusses the wet swamps and wild life of Jamaica, as well as the variety of forests and mountains that can be found there.  There is a discussion of the warm weather of the country, a brief discussion of its history and population, and a lot more time spent discussing the importance of family, shopping, the Jamaican patois, celebrations, travel, sports, and school.  The author talks about Jamaican clothing, especially for carnival, art, dub poetry, raggae music, religion, and food.  Throughout the book as a whole there are a lot of pictures and very little text, not nearly enough to get a large context but plenty enough to know bits of information that the author views as important and that are suitable to the young reading audience that may not want to know the horrors of slavery, for example.  After the main materials of the book are complete the book ends with a representation of Jamaica’s flag, some fast facts about the country, a glossary, some suggestions for further reading, as well as an index.