ONE EARTH, A MULTITUDE OF CREATURES

Set in the Pacific Northwest, 14 double-spread vignettes of woodland, meadow, and sea. A single sentence on each spread interprets the action, including a collective noun (``A mother fox, sensing danger, signals to her litter of pups...''); successive spreads are loosely related by the area and animals involved, coming full circle with owls at the beginning and again at the end, as night returns. Of greatest interest is the art: Kells, who brings expertise in natural history to her first children's book, depicts the animals with exquisite precision. Appreciative but unsentimental, a realistic glimpse of nature at work. (Nonfiction. 4-8)