Marstall's wondrous landscape paintings are reason enough to own this work, subtitled ``A Cycle of Growth and Renewal,'' about the 1988 fires that burned nearly a third of Yellowstone National Park. Dramatic spreads help readers understand what the forest was like before, during, and after the fire, while thumb-sized drawings show park inhabitants and species up close. Pringle (Dinosaurs!, p. 231, etc.) makes his text dense with detail and repeatedly stresses the importance of fires as a natural part of the cycle of growth and renewal in an ecosystem. He covers the same material as Patricia Lauber's Summer of Fire (1991), which used outstanding full-color photographs and a more vivid text. This neither updates nor replaces that title, but it is a worthy companion to it. (further reading) (Picture book/nonfiction. 10-12)
