Almost Gone: The World's Rarest Animals (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- George Did It
Noted author/illustrator Jenkins (Actual Size, BCCB 5/04) appears here in the venerable Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series, offering a gallery of species teetering on the brink of extinction, lost forever, and, in a few cases, coming back under careful protection. After a brief introduction discussing the interconnectedness of ecosystems and the incalculable consequences of extinction, the book gives each of twenty-eight species a page or spread with a dramatic illustration, a note on habitat location and rough population numbers (or the date of its extinction), and a brief paragraph describing its situation (back endpapers provide size information and identify the animals' habitat on a world map). Since there's no connecting narrative, this is more like a series of thumbnail encyclopedia entries, and since there's no rationale for inclusion of these particular species over other endangered, extinct, and reviving species, the selections seem somewhat random. Jenkins' textured-paper composite figures retain their usual elegance, with color variations subtly suggesting the shimmer of scales or the shine of glistening skin. Kids will need to move beyond this to get their larger questions answered, but it would make a thought-provoking and dramatic introduction to the subject of endangered wildlife.
