The Marshall Cavendish International Wildlife Encyclopedia

Book excerpt: A familiar format in collections serving schools and the public: 25 volumes, nearly 3,000 pages, heavily illustrated with color photos and line-drawings, range maps, and many bandw pictures. Covers all animals in articles of a few lines to a few pages. The text is simple enough for age twelve, or so. A genre that is calculated to entertain, inform, and, we hope, lead the reader to more detailed study. The bibliography offers more sophisticated books but is concentrated in v.25. The primary impression is "a picture book" with perhaps 10,000 illustrations. These are of indifferent quality: faded colors, many being fuzzy. The arrangements of the set is by common name (without reference to the Latin term). Interspersed with animals are such general topics as Africa, zoos, conservation. Lacking running headings it is frustrating to search directly without using the index--the zebra in v.1 is within the "Africa" section. Indexed by animal--both common and Latin names, by subject, and classification. Portions of the work have been published as The international wildlife encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of animal life, and Funk and Wagnalls wildlife encyclopedia. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR