Giant Squid: Searching for a Sea Monster (Smithsonian) (Paperback) Giant Squid is an exciting book: part scientific exploration, and part biography. Both the science and the biography are stimulating. You can feel the whole-hearted enthusiastic life of scientist, and co-author, Clyde Roper's 40 years as a squid hunter. So little is known about the giant squid - the sea monster of legend - because it lives almost a mile down in lightless icy waters. 50 or 60 feet in length including its two long feeding tentacles, its size is hard to imagine. Unfortunately this book never shows a simple scale diagram for reference; say a small sidebar with a sperm whale, a squid, a schoolbus and a man. And in fact, although you would expect the historic drawings to be exaggerated; so is the one modern illustration of a fight between a sperm whale and a overly large squid. The book is attractively designed with bright colors, overlaid images and backgrounds and explanatory notes placed in the image instead of as a caption. There is an excellent index, a good bibliography with up to date books for youngsters, a very short glossary and web links. The web links have a disclaimer that they are appropriate and correct at the time of printing. The book should consider using persistent web links (for example webcitations.org) which maintain a permanent archive of the web site, even if it moves, changes, or goes offline. The book's lively style, fascinating scientific facts and attractive layout make this a must for any child curious about life under the ocean.
