COLORFUL CAPTIVATING CORAL REEFS

Patent’s latest nature foray contains a lot of information; unfortunately, it’s often disorganized and pedantic, sometimes confusing. Page four, for example, says that coral reefs are mostly made up of limestone laid down by small animals; page five says that these are called hard corals. On pages 10 and 11 comes the first mention of other types of coral—orange cup and soft—without any explanation of how these corals grow. The straightforward text never quite comes to life. Descriptions of the fish and animals that live on the reef are comprehensive, but not always interesting; the illustrations, though appropriately bold for such a color-filled subject, lack scale (a lionfish bigger than a moray eel?) and movement, and would be greatly improved by more captions. A fine addition to a library looking for a basic work on the subject, but not good enough to supplant what one already has. (Nonfiction. 6-10)