Extreme Animals: The Toughest Creatures on Earth by Nicola Davies

Davies, Nicola. (2006). Extreme Animals: The Toughest Creatures on Earth. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press.

Grade Level:
I would recommend this book for students in grades 3-7.

Author Credibility:
Nicola Davies earned a degree in zoology before writing this book. She has written other children’s books. She has traveled to the Artic. In fact that trip inspired this book. This book is a Children’s Choice for 2006.

Summary:
The author begins by stating that compared to other animals humans are very fragile. The author then starts at the top, the North Pole. She discusses the challenges with living here. Then she discusses some of the animals that live here and how they survive. These animals include the polar bear, arctic musk, sea otter, bowhead whale, and emperor penguin (South Pole). Then the author discusses animals that can let there body temperatures drop and still survive. These include the hummingbird, bats, and frogs. Frogs, Springtails, and Ice Fish use antifreeze like substance to keep their blood from freezing. The author then moves into the desert where it is cold at night and hot during the day. She discusses how roadrunners, camels, and other desert animals survive. The author talks about animals such as spiders living more than 18 months without food. The author then moves to heat and into a volcano. Thermopiles live here, right inside the volcano. The author also talks about the squash factor deep on the floor of oceans. The author even shows animals that get chopped up and yet they survive. They regrow the parts they are missing. Then the author ends by introducing the toughest creature on earth, the tardigrade. This creature can survive extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme pressure, a vacuum, lethal X-rays, and poisonous chemicals. Through all of this the have survived.

Standards:
Science:
*Life Science
*Earth and Space
*Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

Illustrations:
The illustrations were done by Neal Layton. They were done with ink and then digitally colored. They are humorous explanations of the text.

Access Features:
*Diagrams
*Section Titles
*Index
*Glossary

How I would use the book in the classroom:
I would use this book to discuss various animals and how they survive. It would also be beneficial when discussing the different environments in our world.

My response to the book:
I really enjoyed reading this book. I learned a lot, and had fun doing it. The illustrations were comical and added an air of humor to the material. I had never heard of the toughest animal, a tarigrade. Scientists have done everything they could think of to kill these creatures, but they always come back. That was just amazing to me.

Related Texts:
Books relating to animals and how they survive would be great accompanying books.
*Gone Wild by David McLimans
*Life on the Edge: Amazing Creatures Thriving in Extreme Environments by Michael Gross
*Life at the Limits: Organisms in Extreme Environments by David A. Wharton
*Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor’s Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance by Kenneth Kamler
*Extremes: Surviving the World’s Harshest Environments by Nick Middleton

Other:
This book consists of 58 pages. It is logically ordered from cold to hot. The end pages are scattered with tardigrades, the toughest creature on earth. The font end pages and the front cover of the book jacket are blue and white to represent the cold. Creatures that survive in the cold are discussed at the front of the book. The back end pages and the back cover of the book jacket are orange and yellow to represent heat. Creatures that survive in extreme heat are discussed near the end of the book. When you remove the book jacket the front and back cover shows the tardigrade and different things they have survived, like being frozen to absolute zero. The verso and title page hook the reader’s interest by showing bacteria in “boiling, super hot mud.” In order to find out how the survive it encourages you to turn to p. 37. In order to better illustrate certain concepts pages are turned long ways. For example, when discussing jumping insects the illustrations are turned so as to show a tall building with insects jumping over it.