***This book as reviewed for Quarto Publishing via Netgalley

Amazing World: Sea Creatures is full of beautiful sea life photos. Sections at the beginning look at bioluminescence, and how it works. Twenty different deep-sea beasties who use bioluminescence or fluorescence are looked at in greater depth, with fun facts and information on range, depth, size and diet. Many of these features are quite stunning, like the lanternsharks, firefly squid, and bobtail squid. A popular book in our household, Little Moon by Megan Padalecki, is about a bobtail squid. They are so adorable!

Others were the stuff of nightmares, like the gulper eel, and anglerfish. Anglers become more frightening when you read about how the females of many species absorb the males into their bodies, as basically they are only there to be baby daddies. Some females can have up to six (!) absorbed males. That is not okay. My cubs (and myself) were disturbed and saddened to read about the PCB and other human-caused contaminations present on the seafloors, even to the depths of the Mariana Trench and Challenger Deep. How to explain to young children that species alive now will be gone by the time they are grown, and it’s humanity’s fault? Not a fun conversation.

While the younger ones enjoyed the pictures, and listening, the book itself is meant more for upper middle school, given the words used, such as bioluminescence, luciferase, and dinoflagellate. That was really my only qualm. Even for those readers, a pronunciation guide would be a great addition.

???? Recommended for those with an interest in nature, especially sea creatures.