About Mollusks: A Guide for Children by Cathryn Sill; illustrated by John Sill. Peachtree, 2005. 48pp. ISBN 1-56145-331-5.

SB&F review:

Colorful, delightfully detailed illustrations demonstrate the amazing diversity of the mollusk phylum in About Mollusks. Although the one- or two-sentence pages of commentary make this book most appropriate for early education classrooms, the fund of information in the “Afterword” is fascinating reading for older elementary school children and even adults.
As in all the “About…” series of books, each two-page layout in this one has an all-page illustration, with a one- or two-sentence explanation on the page beside it. Through text and pictures, the book describes the main characteristics of this fascinating phylum: soft bodies without bones, mantles, the prevalence of shells, the “foot,” and, for land mollusks, “slime.” Colorful examples of featured mollusks include Florida tree snails, Pacific pink scallops, horse conches, the nudibranch Hopkin’s rose, and giant Pacific octopi.
The “Afterword” expands on the special mollusk characteristics, as well as the creature’s eating habits, geographical location, and size. Because the size varies so much, it may have been helpful in the illustrations to give the young child a visual clue as to how large each organism is. For example, the 8-inch banana slug is not easy to distinguish from the 1½-inch purple-ringed top shell if the reader is not familiar with their surroundings as shown in a picture of each.
The mollusk phylum is a large (more than 50,000 species), but somewhat neglected, animal group. About Mollusks is a wonderful addition to Catherine Sill’s growing series of animal books and a “must” for both classroom and home libraries.

About the author:

Cathryn Sill, a former elementary school teacher, is the author of the acclaimed About...series. WIth her husband John and her brother-in-law, Ben Sill, she coauthored the popular bird-guide parodies A Field Guide to Little-Known and Seldom-Seen Birds of North America, Another Field Guide to Little-Known and Seldom-Seen Birds of North America, and Beyond Birdwatching.

About the illustrator:

John Sill is a prize-winning and widely published wildlife artist who illustrated the About...series and illustrated and coauthored the Field Guides and Beyond Birdwatching. A native of North Carolina, he holds a B.S. in Wildlife Biology from North Carolina State University.

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