FISH FARTS

Welcome to the wonderful world of animal slime, poop, gas, vomit, and gross parenting practices.

Setting out with the worthy purpose of wowing and disgusting young readers, Settel dishes up 18 cases of nature at its nastiest—from slimy slugs and nose-picking capuchin monkeys to Komodo dragons, which swing the intestines of their victims around to clear out the poop before chowing down. Along the way, she shows a knack for slipping in facts as likely to intrigue as revolt, such as the many useful purposes mucus serves in our own bodies, how herring use “fart pops” (up to 40 a second) to communicate, and why giraffe tongues are blue. And while scenes of tiny mites crawling into a hummingbird’s nose or a Darwin’s frog dad spitting out the younglings he’s been storing in his mouth may cause a bit of churn in more sensitive stomachs, in general Donovan tones down the gross in her brightly hued animal portraits enough to elicit more cooing than spewing. A long glossary at the end expands on the physical, chemical, and biological processes mentioned in the narrative in unusual detail.

A crowd-pleasing way to deliver some substantial (info) dumps.