How Nature Works: Don’t Mess With Me: The Strange Lives of Venomous Sea Creatures by Paul Erickson and photographs by Andrew Martinez (ISBN 978-0884485513; Grades 3-7; 48 pages; Hardcover $17.95) teaches young readers the role of venoms in nature … and in human medicine.
Why are toxins so advantageous to their possessors as to evolve over and over again? What is it about watery environments that favors so many venomous creatures? Marine biologist Paul Erickson explores these and other questions with astounding images from Andrew Martinez and other top underwater photographers.
GREAT for teaching STEM Marine Biology.
Scorpions and brown recluse spiders are fine as far as they go, but if you want daily contact with venomous creatures, the ocean is the place to be. Blue-ringed octopi, stony corals, sea jellies, stonefish, lionfish, poison-fanged blennies, stingrays, cone snails, blind remipedes, fire urchins―you can choose your poison in the ocean. Venoms are often but not always defensive weapons. The banded sea krait, an aquatic snake, wriggles into undersea caves to prey on vicious moray eels, killing them with one of the world’s most deadly neurotoxins, which it injects through fangs that resemble hypodermic needles. The Komodo dragon, an ocean-going reptile, tears into a water buffalo with its blade-like teeth, then secretes a deadly toxin into the open wounds.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Oh my goodness, this book was really cool. My son loves the creatures of the ocean, so this book was right up his alley. It was really something to learn about these venomous creatures. The facts in this are really very strange, which makes it all the more intriguing. With amazing photographs and facts this book is sure to be a hit for kids and adults alike! A must for home and school library.
One Iguana, Two Iguanas: A Story of Accident, Natural Selection, and Evolution by Sneed B. Collard III (ISBN: 978-0884486497; Grades 3-7; 48 pages; Hardcover $17.95) is a much-needed contribution to the children’s literature about evolution.
Natural selection and speciation are all but ignored in children’s nonfiction. To help address this glaring deficiency, award-winning children’s science writer Sneed Collard traveled to the Galapagos Islands to see for himself, where Charles Darwin saw, how new species form. The result is this fascinating story of two species of iguana, one land-based and one marine, both of which developed from a single ancestor that reached the islands millions of years ago. The animals evolved in different directions while living within sight of one another. How is that possible?
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book was fantastic! My kids and I were fascinated with all the facts within this amazing photographed and detailed book. I could not get over how much interesting information there is about iguanas. I actually was really blown away by it. I think that this book will be of interest to those that love nature, history and beautifully put together book that keep you fully engaged!
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