ANIMALS EATING

Another child-friendly nature book from the team that offered Animals in Motion (2000), this one has added bite. With no graphic violence, but a deliciously close attention to toothy detail, Stephens paints oversized, in-your-face views of a gaping crocodile, a python swallowing an entire deer, a lamprey's stuff-of-nightmare mouth, and other creature features that will rivet browsers—of the human sort, anyway. Hickman contributes notes and diagrams on the various kinds of teeth, jaws, beaks, tongues, and baleen sported by herbivores, carnivores, and carrion-eaters, adding a look at diverse strategies for taking in nourishment and water. Directions for low-tech demonstrations will help children understand food webs, how a frog's tongue works, a housefly's decidedly icky eating habits and like topics. Seasoned with well-chosen examples and scientific terms, this clear, non-technical study will afford plenty of food for thought—though the lack of a book or Web site list will give readers hoping for leads to further information a bone to pick with the author. (index) (Nonfiction. 9-11)