This is a highly entertaining and clever book, packed with hundreds of photographs, diagrams, facts and figures. The quality of the photography is amazing, including breath-taking magnified images such as dragonflies and moths, pictures of scary creatures like the hagfish and the exploding ant of Southeast Asia, and well-designed comparison diagrams showing height, weight and wingspans of different animals and birds.
Statistics are also presented in a fun and clever way, with a host of unusual facts. For instance, did you know that there are approximately 3,000 wild boards in Berlin? Or that an adult human foot is half the length of that of an African Elephant?
Published by DK (formerly known as Dorling Kindersley), this book is part of DK’s ‘It Can’t Be True!’ series. The hardback version is a hefty tome and and, in my opinion, great value for money. There’s also a Kindle version of the book, though I can’t imagine that format would do justice to the quality of the images in the hardback.
My only criticism is that the cover images seem to be aimed more towards younger children, whereas the contents would definitely be more suited to middle grade readers.
Colin Garrow Books 