All About Manatees
Kindergarten-Grade 4—This engaging picture-book overview is designed to be shared with prereaders and enjoyed by independent readers alike. The author poses basic questions and invites youngsters into the manatee's underwater world to find out the answers. These large gray marine mammals (10–11 feet long and weighing more than 1000 pounds full grown) are shown in the wild with the fish, plants, and birds common to their habitats. Arnosky's signature watercolors add enormously to the book's appeal and extend the information. He places the creatures in the context of the Sirenia order of animals and then gets down to such specifics as how they use their beaverlike tails to swim, how they poke their nostrils above the surface of the water to breathe, how they eat using their flexible snouts to grab aquatic vegetation, and more. This must-have title is a delight to look at and is packed with interesting and pertinent details.—Frances E. Millhouser, formerly at Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.