THE LIVING WORLD; OUTER SPACE

Dramatic, full-color photos, many made under magnification, appear on each page of these titles in the ""Science Close Up"" series, offering new perspectives on the natural world. With slices of plants seen through a microscope, the spiderlike mites dinging to a flea, or the spiky surface of a cat's tongue, The Living World is the stronger book, though some photos are out of focus and degrees of magnification are omitted. The photos in Outer Space, many of them taken from the NASA space program, were more effectively reproduced in Seymour Simon's planet books. Here, small size robs them of impact. Also, the text is often brief and puzzling (""Here is a star. . .Each color you see stands for a different level of brightness, not a real color as it would look to your eyes""). One seldom knows whether one is looking at a photo, a colorenhanced photo, or a computer simulation. Though the vivid photos will stimulate interest, these titles are of limited usefulness. No indexes.