Great Drawings, Very Poor Writing
595997
The Drawings and colors are exceptional; however, the translation from French by Alan McCay is horrendous.  It looks as though a 10th Grade High School student wrote it for his D- grade.  There doesn't appear to be any editor for this book.  Please note, the other books on this series are equally poor.  If you want a visual text on the Napoleonic Battle, this could still be a good book to have in your library.  Perhaps one day, Histoire & Collections will do a Vol. 2 and edit out all the writing mistakes.
3992681
Most of the book is made up of line drawings copied from the originals (or photos of the originals). There are a small percent of photographs or other artist's renderings of much nicer quality. There is a nice range of images but the quality of most of the line drawings is poor to mediocre which hides detail and distracts from the original design. Don't not be fooled by the cover. If you are looking for range, then this is good source but if you are looking for beauty texture, or detail, I would pass.
3082901
Fun time waster, wouldn't buy again because the drawings aren't well done and having unfinished lines.
4270727
I've been drawing for about four years, petty much daily so I know I have a lot to learn.  I've learned most of what I know by watching youtube videos and I highly recommend it.  If you like sloppy, messy sketches you'd enjoy this book. There are two or three contour line drawings that are lovely but beyond that there is nothing to inspire me for I like a cleaner line.  Fortunately, I got this book from the library to read though it before purchasing and I was able to copy two pages that apply to me.  Two pages and the space of this book takes on my book shelf are not worth it to me.
Skip it.
4654033
The writing falls short of the spectacular art.  Clearly, translating from French to English didn't go as smoothly as hoped...

The contents are excellent, with brilliantly rendered full color paintings. The section on USSR armor is too short, however.  The mighty JS-2 tank only gets a few pages of coverage.

One fascinating entry is the only operational Porsche Tiger I tank.  I never even knew Porsche built ANY Tiger I tanks!  I'd love to see Restayn do a book on German WW2 super tank prototypes, i.e. "Mouse", "Panther II", "E-100", etc.

Looking forward to the next two volumes.
3363699
Great book! Bad writing. I love this artist and all of his online articles! but i think the editor dropped the ball on this book. I really wanted to take a red pen to this book and send it back to the editor. but in all fairness it has a lot of great info and lots of wonderful resources for the UK. other wise i would have given all five stars!
89954
I want to like this book, I really do. We've enjoyed the author's cookbooks, and the concept of kids being magically transported on culinary adventures is strong. But the quality of the writing is very poor.  Limited vocabulary, and abundance of waste-words, little attention to imagery and none to sound.  It reads as though it were written by the ghost of a ghost's ghost.  Sorry, Giada--we're going back to Homer Price or Ruby Redfort.
2430656
love the designs but the quality of reproduction and thin paper really hurt the book. the black lines are not crisp! i feel as if i have to scan the drawing, fix the black level, before having a page copied onto good paper. that is unacceptable.

update: i can't make this book look better. the printing is SO bad. i have download free drawings with better/higher resolution drawings from free downloads from the web.

i scanned and increased contrast but there is no way to smooth lines. surely the artist did a better job than this to begin with. or maybe not. there were accidental pen drags and small smudges. this looks like poor reproduction. even an inexpensive book called PrismDesigns has cleaner details.

Don't know if this is how the book was delivered to publisher or if the artist delivered a good copy and the publisher srewed iup trying to save money

i couldn't recommend this book to my friends
1347021
This guy has some of the wort drawing skills I have ever seen . His portions are so way off he may as well be teaching how to draw Martians or some kind of extra terrestrial beings. Do yourself a favor and get a book by a better artist than  this guy. This guy needs to figure out what the heck he's doing.
1852699
The illustrations are great but the quality of it is so bad.
2808815
This colorful book has some very cute and lively illustrations. Sadly the writing lacks a lot of punctuation and the words do not flow. By that, I mean that some of the lines rhyme and some do not so that you just get into a nice flow and are then 'jolted' out of rhythm with the next lines.

Although the author has used some punctuation in the middle of lines, there is hardly any at the end of the lines. (No full stops / periods and/or commas!) There was a spelling error on one page of the copy I received but I have been assured by the author that this has been corrected.

I cannot recommend this book at all. Sorry! Much better ones out there.

Please note that I was provided a PDF copy of this book by the author in exchange for an honest review. The words above are my own.
248917
I really wanted to like this one.  It's a great topic, and the author certainly has done her research.  Unfortunately, the writing is really poor.  I'm talking about middle school kind of stuff - no flow, no transitions between paragraphs, details that add nothing, lots of jumping around, very poor organization.  I'm really surprised this quality of writing could make it into a book.
4580503
I actually borrowed this from our college library, and I'm glad I did because I might have regretted spending money purchasing it. The artwork and artists who are featured in the book are very talented and there is some amazing artwork contained in its pages, but the poor translation into English has really let it down. If you just want to look at the pictures, fantastic, buy the book. But if you want to read the substantial amount of behind the scenes info, and the interviews with the artists, then don't waste your money, as it won't make much sense!
772454
This is the kind of drawing book that shows you how to draw by showing you a finished drawing. There is little to no breakdown. And s good deal of the text is about the animal and how it lives.  Not description on how to draw the animal. The authors drawings are gorgeous. But if I could get correct proportions for animals I don't feel I would need this book meaning it is entirely useless. Skip it. Rent it from the library. But don't buy it unless you're can already draw.

For example here is a shot of the page on river otters. One line work sketch. The rest are small illustrations.
4174809
First of all, I have to say my six year old LOVES this book.  She begged us to get the book and she asks us to read it to her almost every night.  The story itself is fine, but the writing is absolutely atrocious.  This book has some of the most awkward prose and vocabulary I've come across in a children's book.
4416225
I love the artwork and the binding, but I have found the paper very difficult to work on, i use coloured pencils that range from Marco rafine, kids super market pencils all the way through to Caran D'ache, none of them have gone on smoothly, layering and blending has been difficult. The less expensive seem to be easier, but the effect is still poor
3117796
the writing is bad
the drawings are worse

never read it