GONE FISHING

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)