The Sierra Club Book of Small Mammals - Hardcover

Grade 4-7-- This book's high-quality photographs and full-color drawings will entice readers. The first few general chapters, which define and group mammals and outline their history, evolution, and endangered status, duplicate information in the companion volume, The Sierra Club Book of Great Mammals (Sierra Club, 1992), sometimes word for word, including identical illustrations. Knight then focuses on two dozen orders, offering basic facts on physical and behaviorial characteristics and specific, interesting tidbits on several species in each. Coverage is broad, brief, and readable, with unusual facts set off in boxes and all illustrations informatively captioned. This is a solid overview (although the inclusion of tapirs, which at 660 pounds are larger than many of the Great Mammals , is confusing) with an inclusive glossary and a useful list of Mammalia orders (also in the companion volume). A similar treatment with somewhat more depth and a slightly different focus can be found in The Small Plant-Eaters (Facts on File, 1989) .
-Susan Oliver, Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Like The Sierra Club Book of Great Mammals (1992), this falls somewhere between a reference and a browsing book, with dozens of meticulous color drawings and appealing photos of animals, informally grouped by family or characteristics--small marsupials, canids, rodents, etc.--and accompanied with brief technical descriptions of the classification of each, and short paragraphs on some representative species. Some of the information is so telegraphic that logical connections are omitted (``this common shrew is so small it must feed continuously''), and not all uncommon words are defined in the glossary (``prehensile''); there are few clues to scale in the illustrations, and size information in the text is inconsistent. Still, a handsome glimpse of many of our smaller cousins. Glossary; ``How Scientists Group Mammals''; index. (Nonfiction. 9+) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.