Vassili Papastavrou

Once upon a time my friend and I wanted to collect all the Eyewitness books. We never got around to it, partly because our parents wanted us to keep challenging our reading level, which for us nerds that meant reading adult books. However, I find as an adult I keep coming back to teens' and children's literature. I appreciate it--the directness and conciseness--more than I would have as a kid. Sometimes I think these are better written than adult nonfiction because kids certainly have less patience than adults when it comes to reading filler.

Whale approaches all sea mammal life. Besides whales, author Papastavrou wrote about extended whale family members like dolphins and porpoises and fellow oceanic warmbloods like seals, sea lions, dugongs, and various extinct relatives. Like other natural history Eyewitness books the pages turn from basic ecology, biology, conservation, conflicts with humans, history, et cetera. Pictures of animals, historical scenes, parts of animals, tools that humans used in past situations relevant to sea mammals, plants and critters eaten by whales, and more illustrate all you could possibly want illustrated--all without 600 pages of heavy book costing between $50-$100. Yes, Eyewitness books are certainly worth more than they look.

It's a little bit of everything and a good use of my time and money. Maybe I'll have a collection of this series after all, even if it is 16 years later. This book and others like it are great. The only reason why I don't rank it a five star is because despite how compact with knowledge it is, ultimately it doesn't have the influence of a slightly larger, equally compact book that includes overarching concepts.… (mais)