Apex Predators: The World’s Deadliest Hunters, Past and Present

There have always been top-of-the-food-chain predators—“creatures too tough, too big, or too well-armed to be hunted by other animals”—and Jenkins’s commanding collages bring these “apex predators” to vivid life. Some two dozen creatures are examined in all, a mix of the contemporary (Komodo dragon, electric eel) and extinct, such as the 10-foot-tall “terror bird,” a flightless creature native to South American that could weigh “as much as a present-day lion or tiger.” Pithy headlines introduce each animal (a marsupial saber-tooth earns the headline “Fangs—and a pouch”), followed by short descriptive passages: “It was probably an ambush hunter, leaping on a deer or other grazing animal and stabbing it to death with its curved canine teeth.” The intricacy of Jenkins’s distinctive artwork will capture readers’ imaginations, as will the predator face-offs he stages between pairs of predators. Great white shark vs. Dunkleosteus, anyone? Ages 6–9. (June)