In a visually gripping follow-up to his Caldecott Honor-winning Gone Wild: An Endangered Animal Alphabet (2006), McLimans has created a gallery of threatened or officially endangered sea creatures shaped like the numerals 1 to 10 and back. As stylized as animals in Northwest Coastal art and rendered in black, white and a particularly intense blue, each of the central figures is flanked by a smaller, more realistic silhouette, plus basic habitat and status information. With rare exceptions, such as a blue marlin pretzeled into the shape of a 4 and a blue ringed octopus that loses two of its eight legs in becoming an 8, the numerical conceit works brilliantly. Both the humpback whale and the bottlenose dolphin (each a 2) burst powerfully out of the water, a great white shark spirals toothily toward the viewer (6) and the rotund porcupinefish and splitfin flashlightfish do double duty as halves of 10 and as burgeoning zeroes in a central spread of "Ocean Facts By The Numbers." As informative as it is gorgeous. (additional animal and oceanic facts, resources) (Informational picture book. 8-11) Read full book review >

Using a combination of physical and digital media, McLimans offers 26 page-filling, dramatic letter forms in silhouette, each based on the shape of an endangered animal whose name starts with that letter, from "Chinese Alligator<\b>" to "Grevy's Zebra<\b>." Reminiscent of Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich's Bembo's Zoo (2000) as an impressive showcase in visual design, the letters artfully use both filled and empty space to evoke rather than accurately represent their living counterparts, and will likely be of greater interest to students of the graphic arts than to budding naturalists. The author does include very brief notes on each creature's habitat, range, threats and official status, backed up by a closing comment and a multimedia resource list—but like Patricia Mullins's V For Vanishing: An Alphabet of Endangered Animals (1993), this will be more useful to younger readers as a consciousness-raiser than an information source. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-8)Read full book review >