Children's Literature - Denise Lockett

This splashy, colorful book presents animals according to their biomes. Divided by "where they live," the text is organized by grassland, ocean, desert, forest, and polar regions. It offers extensive, age-appropriate activities and questions throughout that are meant to assist parents (or teachers) in exploring the points of the text. The book is durable and of a size friendly to young hands, with large, colorful photos of animals that are instantly appealing: tigers, giraffes, octopi, and penguins are some examples. Unsurprisingly, the book is mammal-focused and it often presents the animals in an anthropomorphic light, using terms such as "Mommy," "jobs," and "babysitters." However, this is forgivable given the very young audience for the book. The text follows a consistent pattern of offering basic facts?"kind," "home," "size," "food," "sounds," and "babies"?regarding each animal. Colorful text boxes and insets around the photos add interesting tid-bits. Not clearly noted but arising anyway, is the issue of predators. That is because the text discusses stripes and camouflage, and the playfulness of both tiger and lion cubs, but delicately refrains from mentioning the reasons for the playful pouncing and the stripes. Other omissions are frustrating as well: the Animal Map meant to illustrate where the featured animals live is simply a picture of the globe on which the continents are color-coded. For example, Africa has both the cheetah ("grassland") and the desert jerboa ("desert") featured in the book, but the map does not distinguish between the two animals' territories, nor does it label where the biomes are on any of the continents. The glossary and index are thorough and yet age-appropriate. The "Parent Tips" section is replete with proposed activities, some of which are useful and some of which are very attenuated from the biological and ecological lessons of the primary text. Reviewer: Denise Lockett