The Neanderthal Book and Skeleton is a sequel to the successful Bones Book and Skeleton. Where the original taught anatomy, this one teaches prehistory and paleoanthropology.

The authors bring an impressive array of qualifications to the project; Kathlyn Stewart is a vertebrate paleontologist and archeologist and Stephen Cumbaa is assistant director of collection and research, both at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. But their qualifications don’t get in the way of fun with this book, whose tone is set by Kim LaFave’s accurate and humorous cartoon illustrations.

The book is divided into sections that put Neanderthals into evolutionary and geographical context, describe what they looked like and how they lived, and give instructions for building the model. All sections are equally fascinating and do a splendid job of comparing the Neanderthals to us. For example, the book tells why Neanderthals have bigger noses than ours and asks readers to speculate whether, if a Neanderthal were given a shave, haircut, and business suit, you’d notice him on the bus in the morning.

The text is entertaining, avoids jargon, and is divided into easily digestible chunks. Short sidebars provide additional facts and the drawings reinforce the main points, making learning fun without sacrificing content. The 12-inch model comes with a bone flute, flint spear, and transparent display case, and is easy to pop together – although there were a couple of frustratingly stiff joints. The skeleton makes a good companion to the human skeleton of the previous book. In fact, because there’s little obvious difference between a Neanderthal and human skeleton, the Neanderthal model needs the human skeleton for comparison in order for kids to see the subtle differences – a small problem.

This is an excellent book for kids with an interest in science or the past. From it, they will quickly and easily absorb a level of knowledge uncommon in many adults and come to the realization that our Neanderthal cousins were a lot better adapted to life in their harsh Ice Age world than we sometimes give them credit for.