PREDATORS
by Lucio Santoro & Meera Santoro & illustrated by the authors
A partially submerged saurian face beckons readers with toothy grin to open and devour, but the information contained within is hardly filling. Six critters each enjoy a page opening, complete with pop-up tableau, slide-out fact-card highlighting hunting style, supplemental facts, mini pop-ups and extinct-o-meter. The first animal presented demonstrates the book’s limitations: spiders, which are found “everywhere.” An indeterminate spider hangs suspended from its web, looking cool but devoid of any clear identification. Bald eagle, crocodile, tiger, polar bear and great white shark fare better, thanks to greater specificity, but the flashy presentation cannot obscure such gaps as a failure to indicate range, a focus on the sensational and occasionally clunky paper engineering. (Pop-up/nonfiction. 6-10)