Jane Parker Resnick

This brief (31 page) book offers for the general public abundant of information about the biology and natural history of snakes. Coverage includes diversity, habitats, styles of locomotion, sense organs, food and feeding, venom, means of defense, reproduction (including egg-laying and live-bearing), highly unusual snakes, and human interactions with snakes. Pages are filled with multiple photograph- based illustrations, each of which is attractive and informative. I noticed no substantial errors, and judge the work to be largely (if not entirely) accurate. A pedantic point: biologists distinguish between animals that are "poisonous" (e.g., toxic to eat) vs "venomous" (able to produce venom for feeding or defense), under which distinction relevant snakes would be classified as venomous.… (more)

I had mixed feelings about the book “Sharks”. One reason that I liked the book is that it is jam packed with helpful information and real photographs. The book divides the information into text boxes with arrows that point to the respective photograph. This is very helpful because then, the reader knows exactly what shark the fact is about, and what the shark looks like. However, I think that using this format takes away from the organization of the book. Having information all around the page in no particular order could cause confusion for the reader. In addition, the book does not include many of the extra textual features generally found in nonfiction books such as a table of contents, index, or glossary. With none of these features, and the jumbled format, it would be very difficult to navigate and find information in this book. It seems to me that this would be a good book for a child who was interested in learning about sharks, but not good for something such as a research project. The main idea of the book is to teach about features and habits of different species of sharks.… (more)