Gopher Tortoises Book

Nature's bulldozer -- The name game -- Size and shape -- Homes on the range -- A fresh meal of plants -- The mating dance -- Baby beware! -- To hibernate or not to hibernate? - ...

School Library Journal

Gr 2-4-These titles present straightforward facts about each species but are poorly illustrated and often confusing. Blomquist covers all the basics-physical attributes, behavior, food, habitat, mating, hatching, predators, and other dangers including environmental factors. The books are heavily illustrated with photographs that are sometimes patched together on a page without clear distinctions between them. Captions appear on the opposite side along with the text and include terms like "top left" and "bottom right" that children may not understand. Turtle-shaped fact boxes are sometimes superimposed on the photos; they usually don't pertain to the illustrations and add to the clutter. Some photographs are muddy and hard to decipher; none of the images is of the excellent quality of pictures found in Mary M. Cerullo's Sea Turtles: Ocean Nomads (Dutton, 2003). A location map in each volume uses red in the key to indicate habitat but brown on the map. Turtles (Gareth Stevens, 2004) and Merebeth Switzer's Turtles (Grolier, 1998; o.p.) are better designed and cover the topic in a more general fashion.-Susan Oliver, Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library System, FL Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.