AGE 7 AND UP
How Animals Build By T Hutchinson and M Butterfield Lonely Planet Kids £12.99
A veritable feast of flaps and foldouts, this interactive hardback is bursting with information on nature’s most incredible architects and the extraordinary, elaborate dwellings they create. Kids will understand at-a-glance how various animals use an oak tree, that a bird's nest isn’t always a pile of sticks, the anatomy of a beehive and the planet’s best burrowers. The showstoppers, though, are the fabulous fourpage fold-outs of a rabbit warren ( above), termite mound, coral reef and beaver lodge.
Lesser Spotted Animals By Martin Brown David Fickling Books £8.99
Better known for his illustrations in Horrible Histories, Brown has turned his hand to wildlife, showcasing, as the title suggests, the lesser known species that share our planet. Here be no elephants or tigers – but the long-tailed dunnart, the banded linsang, the zorilla and 18 other wildlife B-listers. This is brilliantly funny and the illustrations are a hoot, yet it still delivers a wealth of fascinating natural history nuggets, in a comic, conversational tone that makes you want to keep reading.
The Awesome Book of Animals By Adam Frost Bloomsbury £6.99
A perfect stocking-filler, this engaging little book is essentially a series of colourful and clever infographics, communicating all manner of weird and wacky animal facts. It’s mostly fun – lengths of loo roll, for instance, represent how much an animal poos (the panda tops the chart at 40 evacuations per day, while the Demodex mite never goes at all); but there is some thoughtprovoking fodder too, such as how many sharks humans slaughter every year.