THE SECRETS OF ANCIENT SEA MONSTERS

In the Mesozoic Era aquatic reptiles ruled the waters.

This is the third title in an ambitious, illustrated encyclopedia that uses the work of two Chinese storytellers, one working with words and the other with pictures, to bring fossils to life. The first two volumes focused on Mesozoic land- and air-dwelling reptiles; here, readers journey underwater in an imagined “book submarine.” Fossils of creatures who died underwater are far rarer than those of land animals. Yang divides the fossil re-creations into groups, sometimes as small as a family and sometimes as large as a superorder. Each reptile is described on a single spread with a short story and a vivid picture. The text presumes a lot of knowledge—and the ability to read and recall scientific names, since these do not have familiar English names. The use of present tense enhances the idea of an imaginary journey, but in this sometimes-awkward translation, tenses may be mixed within a paragraph or even within a single sentence. Each page also includes fast facts and a helpful size key with shapes such as human silhouettes or a bus—a big help for readers trying to imagine the animals, who are often only partially shown even if posed in dramatic action scenes. Some images are encased in frames, like paintings, while others look like what readers might see through the imagined submarine window.

A colorful album of marine monsters for dinosaur buffs.