Mammoth - Hardcover

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Grade 2-4-A lively overview of the life and times of the mammoth (and some of its cohabitants of the Ice Age). O'Brien offers a history of the various types-some woolly, some not, some huge, some no more than three and a half feet tall-and their habitats. He traces their evolution from the piglike Moeritherium of 45 million years ago to the last extant mammoths, still alive at the time of the Pharaohs, to today's African and Asian elephants, and speculates knowledgeably on the causes of the mammoth's extinction. He also reports on its intersection with mankind. Ice Age cave drawings testify to the animals' importance in the early life of man. Their bones have also fueled some deeply unscientific flights of fancy. Europeans of the Middle Ages believed them to be the bones of giants as did some South American tribes. Siberians thought the bones were the skeletons of giant rats-so-called "mammut"-tunneling to the surface of the earth and considered it bad luck to approach them. The illustrations of the animals, the humans, and the landscapes, in watercolor and gouache, are realistically clear and help make this an enticing offering.
Dona Ratterree, New York City Public Schools
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

K-Gr.3. This large-format introduction begins in America 20,000 years ago; primitive people are attacking a mammoth. Fast-forward to a modern construction site; O'Brien shows the beast's enormous bones unearthed by workers and identified by a scientist at the local museum. The text and the helpful captions go on to explain how people in earlier ages interpreted the huge bones they occasionally found, as well as what is now known about the many types of mammoths, other animals of their time, their current relatives, and the possible reasons for their extinction. The broad double-page spreads offer plenty of space for watercolor-and-gouache paintings depicting Ice Age scenes. The space is used effectively in a variety of ways, from panoramic paintings to small, detailed pictures, from cutaway views to maps. Handsome and informative, the paintings illustrate such topics as how animals became entrapped in the La Brea tar pits, the physical differences between mammoths and African and Asian elephants, and how primitive people built huts of mammoth bones and skins. Carolyn Phelan
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