Extreme Animals: The Toughest Creatures on Earth

I love this book. It is fun to browse through (cartoon-like illustrations make it fun). But it is definitely a book chock full of information. How do seals dive so deep and not get the bends? How do frogs survive winter after being frozen like popsicles? Can an organism really survive temperatures exceeding 230 degrees or as low as absolute zero, -459 F? Not only does this little book provide these answers and explanations, it will leave the reader hungry for more mind-blowing revelations about life on this planet, and perhaps on the next. Warning: It will be difficult not to read snippets to whomever is in the room with you.

Lots of people have written about penguins, polar bears, and bacteria--but not this way! Nicola Davies has written stories about the roughest, toughest, baddest animals there are, so funny I was laughing out loud and so good I couldn't put it down. She brings life to the dullest subjects. Is a sponge an interesting creature? It never was to me, but her account is. She says, "To be honest, even live sponges don't do much. They just sort of sit there and grow. But put one in a blender and you'll see that they do something no other animal can: pour your sponge smoothie back into its seawater home, and it will put itself back together..." Explanations that are accurate but make sense to a non-scientist (animals with "antifreeze" in their bodies, for example) and deceptively simple illustrations by Neal Layton make this one of my new favorite books.