An eye-filling showcase with much to offer both general browsers and budding biologists.
A select portrait gallery of terrestrial mammals, enhanced with close-up details and zoological notes.
Alonso (Early Cretaceous, 2015) switches from dinosaurs to extant wildlife (domesticated animals, including Homo sapiens, don’t make the cut here), presenting in no particular sequence representative members of 15 mammalian orders in dignified but lifelike poses against neutral-toned backgrounds. The accomplished artist portrays each subject not to scale but with careful exactitude—every hair, claw, spike, and wrinkle seemingly individually drawn—and surrounds each with descriptive notes printed, mostly, in a faux-cursive typeface. Along with pointing out salient physical features, the notes include species names, ranges and sizes, diets, and International Union for Conservation of Nature statuses from “Least Concern” to “Critically Endangered.” He also adds occasional inset looks at individual paws or feet, expands his section on the Chiroptera (bats) with two subgalleries of close-ups to highlight their startling diversity of facial features, and injects momentary drama by catching a hyena, a Kodiak bear, and, in a head-only shot, a puma in midroar.
An eye-filling showcase with much to offer both general browsers and budding biologists. (glossary) (Nonfiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63322-196-3
Page Count: 131
Publisher: Walter Foster Jr.
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Here is an adventure in a unique setting. The lively text and lovely watercolors document three and a half months of a summer the artist and author spent at the South Pole, as part of the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists & Writers Program. Hooper describes everyday life aboard the research ship Laurence M. Gould, a sturdy orange icebreaker that scientists use to travel between the islands to study the wide variety of animals who come each year to breed and raise their young. An assortment of penguins, elephant seals, giant petrels, huge skuas, and leopard seals hold center stage. Scientists are less important than the serious business of successfully raising young in the short summer season. The author captures the drama of the ice-cold ocean, alive with life: “Swarms of barrel-shaped blue-tinged salps, stuck together in floating chains. Minute creatures with red eyes. Sliding through the water in a curving path like a ribbon.” The artist provides striking paintings of the landscape and the animals in soft washy colors, and quick pencil sketches. The ice is lemon gold with mauve shadows, and the sea a silver gray in the 24-hour day. Animals are expressive and individual. The krill, the tiny shrimp-like creatures that form the backbone of the ocean food chain, appear in luminous glory. The author concludes with a page on global warming, a map of the islands visited, and an index. From cover to cover a personal and informative journey. (Nonfiction. 7-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7922-7188-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
The author of The Snake Scientist (not reviewed) takes the reader along on another adventure, this time to the Bay of Bengal, between India and Bangladesh to the Sundarbans Tiger Preserve in search of man-eating tigers. Beware, he cautions, “Your study subject might be trying to eat you!” The first-person narrative is full of helpful warnings: watch out for the estuarine crocodiles, “the most deadly crocodiles in the world” and the nine different kinds of dangerous sharks, and the poisonous sea snakes, more deadly than the cobra. Interspersed are stories of the people who live in and around the tiger preserve, information on the ecology of the mangrove swamp, myths and legends, and true life accounts of man-eating tigers. (Fortunately, these tigers don’t eat women or children.) The author is clearly on the side of the tigers as she states: “Even if you added up all the people that sick tigers were forced to eat, you wouldn’t get close to the number of tigers killed by people.” She introduces ideas as to why Sundarbans tigers eat so many people, including the theory, “When they attack people, perhaps they are trying to protect the land that they own. And maybe, as the ancient legend says, the tiger really is watching over the forest—for everyone’s benefit.” There are color photographs on every page, showing the landscape, people, and a variety of animals encountered, though glimpses of the tigers are fleeting. The author concludes with some statistics on tigers, information on organizations working to protect them, and a brief bibliography and index. The dramatic cover photo of the tiger will attract readers, and the lively prose will keep them engaged. An appealing science adventure. (Nonfiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-07704-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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