FIERCEST FEUDS

Some of nature’s toughest animals battle one-on-one in a set of five death matches.

When animals go into battle with each other, lots of factors can determine who will win, from a creature’s tough skin to its ability to inject poison in its foe. This work collects five books that detail what might happen in to-the-death fights between a Komodo dragon and a king cobra; a tarantula and a scorpion; a whale and a giant squid; a hyena and a honey badger; and a falcon and a hawk. Before the result is played out as a what-if mini-story with photorealistic illustrations, readers will find pages and pages of facts. For anyone who likes trivia about animals, each fight contains volumes of factoids and bite-sized lessons in biology. So much so that small sections, each labeled “Fact,” are piled with “Bonus Facts,” “Fun Facts,” “Interesting Facts,” “Gross Facts,” “Yummy Facts,” and “Sharp Facts” (in relation to teeth) in addition to “Dangerous Definitions,” warnings for humans, and “Did You Know?” sections. It’s quite a lot, enough to make one exhausted from information overload before the final verdict. The fights pull no punches, with animals getting bones broken and poisoned to death. Sometimes the logic doesn’t exactly follow. After a snake kills a Komodo dragon, the next line in the text reads, “Maybe next time, the Komodo dragon will bite first.” Seems unlikely. Occasional humorous asides (“The Tarantulas would be a great name for a football team”) keep the book from being a totally dry undertaking.

An overly fact-packed science book that’s not written for the squeamish.