ALL ABOUT FROGS

Usually a naturalist among naturalists, Arnosky (One Whole Day: Wolves, not reviewed, etc.) stumbles with this somewhat careless primer. Though in his green-tinged pictures he depicts a range of North American and tropical frogs, often life-sized, as well as their prey, predators, and stages of development, otherwise-anatomically-exact amphibians sport nether regions that look airbrushed, and every creature is labeled until the “predators” page—on which the turtle is represented only by a hard-to-recognize head. Furthermore, to state that “All amphibians are cold-blooded. They warm up in the sun and cool off in the shade” isn’t particularly enlightening, and there are neither pronunciation guides for the scientific terms, nor any leads to sources of further information. Budding biologists will take a longer leap with Judy Hawes’s new edition of Why Frogs Are Wet (2000). (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-7)