My goodness, firstly thanks to Charlotte at Nosy Crow for this review copy. This book is stunning. The text is highly suited to school use but is easily good enough for adults to read as well. There are certainly words and facts about animals I didn't know. The illustrations are quite beautiful. I found some facts surprising, some are listed below.. The extinct Asian straight-tusked Elephant was bigger than the African Bush elephant. The extinct Stellar's sea cow was huge compared to todays West Indian manatees. The Stellar's sea cow was up to 9m long and weighed up to 10 tonnes! The extinct sabre-toothed cat was smaller than Tigers, Lions and Jaguars (who are that order in size). We learn about the extinct, todays extended family of that extinct animal and how todays animals help the habitat they live in. The RRP of this book is £20 and it is totally worth it, get it for less and you will be on a winner! It is a children's book but one you could put on the coffee table and adults would pick it up. This won't be on the library shelf at school for long!

Whether irresistibly cute or visually unappealing, animals are a source of endless fascination to many of us, adults and children alike. While most of us are unlikely to come across anything larger than an Alsatian, or possibly the occasional horse, big animals always have the power to bring about a feeling of wonder and awe when we encounter them. In this fantastic new nonfiction text from publisher Nosy Crow, for which I was lucky enough to receive a sampler comprising one quarter of the book's pages, young readers are presented with a wealth of facts and figures about the world's largest animals - not just those living today but also their prehistoric ancestors - in a fascinating read that will both educate and entertain. Sharing with us mammals such as elephants and bears, ratites - enormous birds, and sea creatures like sharks and octopuses, author and illustrator have worked together to give us both a sense of scale of the size of the organisms included and lots of really interesting information about them including their diet, anatomy and importance to the habitats to which they belong or belonged, and - in the case of some of those prehistoric animals - how they survived and adapted to the world around them when the dinosaurs didn't. Perfect for budding zoologists in Year 3 upwards, this would make a great gift or addition to any KS2 classroom shelf or primary school library. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the pages included in the sampler that I was lucky enough to receive and would very happily read the rest of the book, given the opportunity.