November 15, 2019
Grades 5-8 The rise of new digital technologies has made life more convenient?with a cost. The Privacy in the Digital Age series (6 titles) covers the security risks made possible by the internet, detailing vulnerabilities, explaining common scams, and giving landmark examples of hackers exploiting these new tools. Each title consists of five or six short chapters, with sidebars adding trivia and interstitial Straight to the Source segments offering first-hand reports. Identity Theft lays out myriad ways people's personal information is stolen and shows how harmful this can be. The series succeeds in presentation: its layout, art design, and typography all add up to a visually appealing and practical package. The text, however, is stale, mostly using short, stilted sentences to list facts. At times the reading level doesn't jibe with the subject matter, particularly in more elevated discussions of politics and technology, making this series perhaps a better fit as a high/low resource. Nevertheless, the overall topics remain relevant to today's middle-school students.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)