November 1, 2015
PreS-Gr 2-The animals in this well-designed series have been hand-picked for their positive social behaviors. After briefly covering appearance, diet, habitat, and social structure, the author uses the remaining pages to explore a noteworthy trait, such as dolphins' helpfulness or elephants' kindness. Gorillas uses poaching traps to demonstrate how gorillas care for one another (many of them have learned to destroy these harmful contraptions, rather than avoiding them, to keep others safe), while Rats presents lab animals only and describes an experiment that illustrates how the rodents often share. Each spread features a single, concise nugget of information along with a carefully chosen, attractive photo. Terms such as matriarch, bond, and aggressive are presented in bold and defined in the text. The concluding "More Facts" page provides exactly what it promises. VERDICT Great introductions to pro-social behavior for young animal lovers.
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