Smithsonian Handbooks: Mammals

My 7 AND 4 year olds LOVES this book! The photos are great (better than illustrations) and I can read all the details to him. Every little boy should have this set of books!

While this book is certainly not comprehensive (especially in regards to the rodents and bats), it has hundreds of crisp, clear photos. The descriptions for each species is brief, but there are still many interesting facts to learn from the text. I bought this book mainly for its value as a photographic reference (I'm a visual artist) and becaus I particularly love small mammals and this book has plenty of animals that even I wasn't totally familiar with. My only complaint about this book is the sort of briefness of it; I honestly think they could have squeezed in a few more species, but they did manage to get most of the important ones, and I believe all of the families are at least represented. This is a great book for both kids who like to look at pictures and learn about animals and for adults who appreciate the wonders of nature.

these books are the very best if you want accuracy,i plan to have the entire collection of them by years end.

I looked for this kind of book my whole life, I think. It includes all the less-known species that most books avoid because they are "too exotic", such as olingo, but also the species found in familiar areas around home (wood mice, water vole), so you can see that your region is an important part of the world. For a book of this size, it basically has everything in it. Of course, volumes can be told about each of the species, but this is the most comprehensive work on mammals of the world, packed into a medium-sized volume, that I have ever seen.