The most complete animal book I have seen. If anyone has seen a more complete book, please let me know. My son is an animal fanatic and trudges out this book whenever we have company and asks me or the company to read with him.

A book that I grew up with. This book gave me a complete understanding of animals, their classifications. Different genuses, ecology and many other things. It introduced me to animals and that I will never forget. My general knowledge would have never been the same without this book.

This is one of my favorite books, if only because of the sheer amount of data, pictures, and multitudes of species (only, she says).

If Animal Planet or Nat Geo Wild are some of your favorite channels this is the book for you!

this is the best book i ever read before and i what to say that you wrote the best book if i was you

I've read this about a million times and it always seems to have some new and fun animal that I would LOVE to learn about. Every animal lover should have this on there shelf! (Mine has a penguin on the cover though.) The pictures are breath taking and you really get a lot of information on any animal.

Beautiful and truly definitive. Selfishly, I was hoping for different bird and butterfly species. (Never a keel-billed toucan.) Highly recommended.


Added 12/19/24 - I bought another edition at Costco lol and it is gorgeous as well but I cannot find it on Goodreads.

Fantastic one volume compendium of animal life, informative and beautifully illustrated.

It's a great coffee table book. It'll probably always be on my "currently reading" shelf because it's so fun to pull out and flip to a random page. Plus it's huge so it'll take awhile to get through every bit of information that's packed in.

This book weighs about as much as I do and is longer than most dictionaries, but it's also the most fantastic, visually-stimulating, concise guide to every species of animal in the world. My copy is cracked down the spine from so much handling, because it is one of my absolute favorites.

(I also not-so-secretly call it my big book of daemons.)

We use this book ALL THE TIME when my kids have projects or just want to learn more about animals in the world!! Great reference!

Fascinating. Utterly and completely fascinating!