I really enjoyed this book. The author is very descriptive and each chapter was really short. I loved the pictures and the writing equally well. I recommend it to students and adults alike, especially to those whom like environmental studies. This book is a very quick read, I read it in the afternoon. ( )

This delightful book is rather like a rich dessert, best ingested in small portions so that one can fully enjoy each bite. The book consists of short stories, each describing a moment in an ecosystem. Lyrical, but without anthropomorphism or sentimentality, these stories are densely beautiful snapshots of the biological world. These would be excellent bedtime stories for scientists. I can think of little more pleasant than to be cozily tucked into bed with a warm voice reading one of these stories to me to inspire my dreams.

Worth owning. ( )

The photos, along with the accompanying stories are amazing. Not only did I enjoy this book immensely, but so did my 9 year old daughter! This book would totally be appropriate for any school aged child as well as adults. The author did a fantastic job of putting everything together so as to not make it a boring adventure. He brought the reader into each story. ( )

This book is a collection of brief natural history narratives. Each is a few pages long and describes a few plants or animals of a particular species in its context and its relationships with other species in its habitat.

There are a variety of types of habitat discussed: aquatic, forest, mountain, etc. as well as many biological themes such as migration, speciation, adaptation, extinction and mimicry.

I found the book a bit slow at first, but I found a key: in the chapter on neon flying squid, the verbal image of photoluminescent organisms rising to the surface at night seeming to mirror the stars is one that Coleridge could have used. If Ray Bradbury had known about squid shooting out of the water like rockets he would have mentioned it in his stories.

Each chapter ends with a brief discussion of how much of the narrative is based on actual observations and what parts are informed speculation. The speculations seem well-grounded; there are references to scientific papers and books in each chapter. Each also has a black and white illustration, photographically manipulated to emphasize one of the points in the chapter. The alterations of the photos or collages are easily spotted, so this is interpretation, not a means to mislead the reader.

The book is suitable for general readers and as supplementary reading for an AP biology course. For use as a textbook it might be best to redo the illustrations in color: several high school students I know refuse to watch black and white movies because they are 'not realistic'. ( )

This is a delightful little natural history book. A lot of science these days is focused on the very large and the very small. It's beyond our natural senses. Instead of being able to observe, hear, smell, and touch it, it becomes abstract out of necessity. Natural history remains one niche of science where those senses can still be employed. Despite it being one of the oldest branches of science that has been renamed a number of times through the ages, there is still a lot nature that is unexplained or even studied. Like most forms of knowledge in the present the data coming in is increasing but is nowhere near being exhausted.

This slim volume takes us on a journey that encompasses the land, the sea, and the air. From a coral reef with its cleaning station stocked with cleaning fish to some neon flying squid to the natural decaying processes of a dead whale. There are micromoths on the land, stoned field mice that ate the wrong kind of mushrooms and a owl that solved its parasite problem with a blind snake. Each essay is short and sweet and written in storytelling language. There is some conjecture which takes place on what might be running through a particular species mind but it remains plausible. Creative non-fiction if you will. There are source notes at the end of each essay citing the papers from which the conjectures arose from.

The author's brother also contributed some creative photographs to accompany the text. The end result is a quite charming and not quite traditional natural history book. ( )