I enjoyed Laura Perdew’s 2020 picture book Stink Fights, Earwax, and Other Marvelous Mammal Adaptations. It is nonfiction built around a single biological principle: adaptation. This gives Perdew (and readers) the chance to explore a wide range of adaptations found in very different mammals: giraffes, cheetahs, lemurs, whales, elephants, star-nosed moles, and more.
This gives illustrator Katie Mazeika the chance to portray animals large and small, on land and sea (and underground, flying, or hanging from trees). This gives a lot of visual variety. Taken together, the book has both unity (all adaptations, all mammals, all the time) and change. Both are useful for young readers.
There are some oddities to the book. For example, before page 1 there are four haiku, with traditional 5-7-5 syllable counts, but also with titles (uncommon for haiku) and without the seasonal references of classical haiku (or a return to verse). There are also elements that could be stronger. For example, when discussing the elephant’s trunk, the text lists the many ways it can be used besides smell. Two of these are as a fork and as an alarm…but neither text nor illustration guides kids as to what these mean.
Those points aside, this book is pleasant and useful. Each mammal and adaptation gets a two-page spread. Some get close-ups on key details, like the focus on the spurs of the platypus. There are activities at the end, and a glossary of new terms.
