HIDE AND SEEK

Photographs of living creatures in their natural environment illustrate this introduction to animal camouflage around the world. Organized by habitats—savannah, sea, desert, arctic, forest and mountains—a short introduction accompanies a picture of each kind of area followed by three or four illustrations and one-paragraph descriptions of particular species who live in that habitat around the world. The range is wide: from antelope in Yellowstone National Park to crabs in Papua New Guinea, desert adders in Namibia to tiger-herons in Venezuela. Each introductory photograph includes an unidentified animal, described later in “the back story,” which includes more about each of the 28 species, the Latin name and the locations where the photographs were taken. Pictures on the front cover, title page and verso are not identified. Without page numbers, the backmatter is less helpful to the reader intrigued by the detection game. Careless species identification and editing, and the lack of table of contents or index make this no more than an intriguing collection of pictures. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-8)