This oversize volume does not have to beg to be opened. It invites readers into a natural history museum where the species are curated, categorized and presented in six visual "galleries."
Spectacular colored pen-and-ink illustrations capture some of the 200 million species that inhabit, or once inhabited, the earth. Readers (children and adults alike) will savor and investigate this visual catalog over and over again. Using Charles Darwin's Tree of Life as their model to show the classes' evolutionary order and how animal groups are related, the text and the section introductions read like museum exhibit catalog copy. Each color plate is accompanied by the scientific name for the species, its actual size, and a nugget of information about the species written as if it were a label for the image in a museum display. Animalium: Welcome to the Museum will capture the interest of budding scientists, future curators and all animal lovers. --Susannah Richards, associate professor, Eastern Connecticut University