Wild World

Gr 4–6—In this lovely oversize volume of free verse poems, McAllister introduces 13 habitats and their animal denizens using brief, descriptive language accompanied by beautifully rendered and easily recognizable representations of flora and wildlife. The poetry often plays with scale, zooming in on small details to reveal big concepts: "Termites swarm among dead things on the dark forest floor,/Never knowing that their tiny work feeds giants." Each biome represented has its own way of life, which the author encourages readers to protect by using less energy, generating less trash, eating from sustainable source, and helping to protect the wild world around us. Illustrations range from the busy creature-filled paintings of moorland and woodland to the clipped and pieced papercraft of the stark, sparsely inhabited mountain scene.