WHEN I was 11 years old my best Christmas present was a book called The Wonderful World of Animals. I had read it from cover to cover by Boxing Day. Tattered and much thumbed, it is still on the shelf, and is still consulted by my niece. And here, with swisher graphics, fact boxes and bullet-pointed factoids, is my old favourite’s lineal descendant, The Encyclopedia of Animals.
There are some biases in this otherwise excellent book – mammals take up 176 of the 525 pages allotted to the animal groups, while invertebrates get a paltry 71 pages. What is less…
