The Big Book of Beasts

This is a kind of encyclopedia, all about beasts – this book says “beasts” are animals that are mammals that are wild! Not all of them are carnivores or predators, but a lot of them are. This book has pages for carnivorous mammals like tigers, wolves, hyenas, and cheetahs – but there are also pages about sloths, beavers, warthogs, and honey badgers. Most of the pages talk about one of these groups of animals and give you some interesting facts about them, like where they live, what they eat, or how they survive. For example, an armadillo has strong front claws for digging burrows, and did you know that sloths don’t have any smell of their own? That is really cool!

The pictures in this book are fun to look at. They are watercolor paintings and aren’t meant to be realistic, but you can tell what kind of animal they are, and they have funny expressions. Another fun thing about this book is you can look for hidden pawprints in some of the pictures. This is a really good animal encyclopedia for children who are pretty young, but the pictures are so much fun that older kids will like it, too.