We are big time Burgess fans here - all of my boys love those books. I just wanted to add a few things:
@mommasmurf - the field guide ones (if you are meaning the Bird Book, Seashore, Animal book) are story books as well, so don't think that the "field guide" label makes them any less readable. My son is reading the bird book now (as I think we've read most all of the individual titles that Dover prints) - in it Peter Rabbit gets introduced to all the different birds with Jenny Wren as his main guide - very cute meeting all the different bird personalities, which are very accurate.
As far as the evolutionary aspect goes, the way we handle it, along with anything else we come across that mentions "mother nature" is treating it as nature personified. Just like all the other aspects in the Burgess Books, Jolly Round Red Mr. Sun, the Black Shadows, the Merry Breezes - it is another character. My boys are still young, so I am sure that we'll get into deeper discussions later, but we teach them that God created everything. In fact, they will often say when a question comes up as to why things are so "Mamma, that's just the way God made it!" So, I don't find it confusing or harmful at all - I don't think the books portray any sort of nature worship. Also in the books it seems that Mr. Burgess wasn't the biggest fan of hunters, as he speaks of the "hunters with the terrible guns" - well, our family is one of hunters, it makes groceries much more affordable as we don't buy much meat (and ours is very natural and we know what is in it b/c we process it ourselves!). That doesn't seem to bother our boys either. They understand dominion, as we've taught it to them from a biblical perspective, and we read those parts and understand that from the animals' perspective those are terrible guns! In fact, last year I had to shoot a rattlesnake that was right in front of our house heading to the play yard - when our three year olds retold the story they said that "mamma shot that snake with Murphy's terrible gun!" So, all that to say, I wouldn't worry about those things you may not wholly agree with, if you are teaching them to put things through the Biblical grid they will sort it out just fine - like CM says over in over (and I grossly paraphrase) we underestimate how much they can understand and process - there is too much good in these books to pass them up! They are hands down our favorite nature books.
And before we know it, it's very late.
