Fossils, frozen carcasses, carved objects and cave paintings, vestiges of elephant-like animals long extinct, have excited human curiosity for thousands of years. This lively addition to a growing body of topic books focuses on the woolly mammoths more common in Eurasia and northern North America, although it gives a nod to their cousins who roamed further south. Research methods, shapes and sizes, habitat, diet, daily life, relationship to modern-day elephants, theories about their extinction and more are covered in double-page spreads. “The Mammoth Department Store” catalogs how prehistoric man might have used mammoth parts. There is a good interrelationship between text and pictures, including paintings, color photographs, cartoon-like drawings and ghostly reverse images of imagined past beings. A wide variety of formats—from text-plus-pictures, to comic strips, sidebars and boxes of infobits—provides an appealing entry for younger readers. The glossary, index and suggested books, videos and links for further study will help the elementary school researcher. An attractive, informative package to be shelved alongside Caroline Arnold’s When Mammoths Walked the Earth (2002), which has a more traditional presentation. (Nonfiction. 7-11)
