Upon receiving it, I read it in its entirety to my 3 boys. They were engaged the whole book through, and even stopping to discuss certain interesting facts or respond to questions, we were finished reading in under 20 minutes as this book is a balance between artwork and short commentary on each page. While I was aware of some of the facts in this book, some were new to me and I found the book to be interesting.
It was a delight to read, Safstrom's drawings gave it charm, and it sparked curiosity and a desire to learn. I would recommend this book to most anyone. It could serve a purpose as a gift item, a coffee table conversation-starter, or a book to spark an interest in studying the animal kingdom.
"A panda's diet consists of 99% bamboo, but their stomachs are actually designed to eat meat." - Our belief is that, while it may look to scientists like a panda's stomach is designed to eat meat for one reason or another, perhaps the acid content or the length of time spent in that phase of digestion, God designed panda's to eat bamboo, and their stomachs do just what they're designed to do.
On a page that says, "When the female clownfish in a group dies, the most dominant male will turn into a female to take her place," there is a speech bubble by one drawing which states, "It takes a strong man to become a woman!" Some people may take offense to this statement, but it can spark fascinating conversations about how different animals are from people.
On a positive note, one page states that scientists held a specific belief about bees until the 17th century, when they finally admitted they'd been wrong. This is a wonderful lesson about how people do not know everything, make mistakes, and should confess them, not hide them or be discouraged from continuing to learn just because of a set-back.
**In the interest of full disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book courtesy of Blogging for Books for the purpose of reviewing. I was not obligated to give a positive review, my opinions are my own.