Stuck! The Story of La Brea Tar Pits

Uglow’s rhythmic text traverses thousands of years as it tells the prehistoric tale of many fossils coming to exist in Los Angeles’s La Brea Tar Pits. At book’s opening, an unsuspecting Harland’s Ground Sloth accidentally enters the pits’ “oozing, oily stickiness,” followed by hungry predators that also become stuck, eventually forming “menageries trapped together/ under seeping asphalt and sediment.” A spread zips forward to the moment when oil field workers discover a “time capsule” of bones hiding within the pits, providing scientists with a window into the past. Washed in muddy hues, Milovanova’s free-form illustrations include markings that seem scratched into each page’s coloring—an apt approach given scientists’ work to peer beneath the pits’ surface in search of the region’s prehistory. Back matter includes a glossary. Ages 7–10. (Mar.)