This encyclopaedia contains four alphabetically arranged volumes, exploring every aspect of the contemporary world. Through the themes the books cover physical science and technology, science, geography and life skills. Headwords have been selected that lend themselves to spreads with a logical development of information, so that the individual facts contained within each spread can be linked in a coherent fashion. The encyclopaedia teaches the basic principles of the use of reference material, the arrangement of its subject matter, and its indexing and cross-referencing. As an aid in the teaching of reading skills, the carefully-structured language is intended to encourage the pre-reader, but is not too young for eight-year olds. Interconnected workbooks, providing games, exercises and puzzles based on the subject matter in the four volumes are designed to stimulate and guide use of the encyclopaedia, aiding and helping to develop reference use skills.