Mighty Animals: Powerful Beasts of the Wild - Hardcover

K-Gr 3--Two visually appealing titles with very little substance. Weird Creatures focuses on unusual animals and Powerful Beasts looks at creatures notable for their size and/or strength. Both books contain two-page spreads with a large, full-color photo of the featured animal surrounded by text and several smaller pictures. A cartoon shows the animal's size in relation to a human. The text combines basic information about the creature with other trivia and statistical facts, but doesn't go much beyond a standard encyclopedia entry. Terms such as "cold-blooded" and "molt" are briefly defined. The lack of an index makes these volumes even less useful for reports. While the books are obviously not intended to be all-inclusive, the choices of animals presented sometimes seem a bit puzzling. Weird Creatures is the better of the two. Few would argue about the inclusion of the tapir, the Komodo dragon, or the Tasmanian devil in that category. However, baboons do not instantly spring to mind as an example of Powerful Beasts. These books may be of some interest to browsers, but anyone seeking in-depth information would be better served by the many superior titles already available.

Arwen Marshall, New York Public Library

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