Wild World

Poems offer loving tributes to 13 endangered world habitats, including the rainforest, Arctic, deep sea, outback, and desert. In lyrical free-verse, McAllister treats each environment as a distinctive character, while placing emphasis on vocabulary words through italics. A poem for the coral reef reads: “Jewel box of the ocean,/ Where gaudy fish, glint like trinkets in the sparkling blue./ Does the rainbow plunge here,/ Splashing color to life as scale and fin?” Back matter offers readers additional facts about the habitats, along with a plea to conserve and protect the wild. The digitally rendered illustrations from Danish illustrators Hvass&Hannibal can at times lack dimension; the artwork is at its most appealing when vine tendrils and octopus arms are allowed to encroach upon the space of the poems. Ages 4–7. (Mar.)