Super Shark Encyclopedia: And Other Creatures of the Deep

by Derek Harvey

Super Shark Encyclopedia uncovers the secrets of the oceans by exploring a remarkable array of 80 sharks and other sea creatures — from Barrel Shrimp to Blue Sharks, Starfish to Bat Fish, and Hammerhead Sharks to Sandtiger Sharks, plus surfing penguins, deep-sea monsters, rays, eels and more. Packed with jaw-dropping facts about animal behavior and anatomy, new x-ray artworks utilize cross-sections and strip layers away to show key anatomical features in detail. It showcases record-breaking animals, such as the deadliest predators and the most venomous creatures, and explains how and why their bodies work the way they do. With its combination of spectacular photography and clear yet authoritative text, Super Shark Encyclopedia is the ultimate visual guide to the oceans' most incredible stories.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Animals, Childrens

208 pages, Hardcover

First published June 2, 2015

Reviews

[Online Eccentric Librarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

Super Shark Encyclopedia truly lives up to its name - beautifully presented, mountains of facts, and information intelligently ordered to make this a book children can grow with - from basic information suitable for grade school interspersed with more detailed information useful for older kids/middle school. It's the type of book that is so incredibly well done that it should be in every library and school. Certainly, it's a fantastic home resource as well.

Although the focus is on sharks, other deep sea creatures are also presented. The book breaks down as follows:

Amazing anatomy (discover what makes ocean animals ideally suited for their environment - fins, tusks, teeth tentacles, colorful camouflage, spines, etc.).

Animal athletes (jumpers, flyers, surfers - from boxing with crabs to thrashing around with a thresher shark).

Life stories (survival techniques from krill/safety in numbers to parrotfish covering themselves in slime.

Supernatural senses (some animals have extraordinary abilities - from sensing electrical signals to detecting light that other creatures can't see).

Exploring the deep (all the incredibly strange and fascinating creatures at the greater ocean depths).

While parents and kids may at first be interested in the shark aspect, there really is so much more here. Illustrations, photographs, call out boxes (e.g., 'California horn shark at a glance, including size, habitat, location, diet) help tell the story. There are fun facts, interesting comments, and a slew of very interesting tidbits. But it is rarely presented in block paragraph form - instead everything is presented brightly and in creative and engaging ways that encourage young readers to devour the topic. Never does the book talk down to kids or strike a false or syrupy note.

Because it is so incredibly informative and beautifully presented, this is an easy 5 star, highest recommendation. I've rarely seen a better 'encyclopedia' type of presentation on the subject of sealife. As well, I've gone over it with my 11 year old many times and she loves to explore the various sea creatures and their facts - it's definitely a hit with her. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

[Gauge K · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book “Super Shark Encyclopedia” is a really nice book. I like it a lot. It has many facts in it, along with pictures of x-rays of the animal or just a normal picture of it. The pictures are very detailed and informative. All of the x-ray pictures show internal organs and muscles along with the bones. This has been the only book I have read on sharks that shows the organs, muscles and bones. This book is in our Boone Grove Elementary library, but not in our Boone Grove Middle School library. There are hardly any books about sharks in the middle school library, this is very sad. The books they do have are easy reads that do not have a lot of information, I believe they are for younger readers than middle school. I do own a copy of this book. Since it is one of my favorites, my parents bought it for my birthday a few years ago.

This book is where I found out that the giant moray eels have 2 sets of jaws. One in the throat, and one where jaws normally are. It grasps its prey with the front set, and then grabs its prey with the one in its throat, along with pulling it down the food pipe. It kind of seems like a real life xenomorph, from the Alien movies. Very interesting, but creepy at the same time.

The book also talked about sardines. Surprisingly, the schools of sardines can be so large that they can be viewed by satellite! That is an enormous amount of sardines! They can be up to 1 mile in length, and 1 mile in depth. THESE ARE SARDINES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT! They are so tiny, but their groups are GIGANTIC! Pictures I have seen, looks like a literal oil spill, when viewed from the surface, because of their dark color. I cannot even imagine seeing a school of sardines that large in real life.

Also, it talks about basking sharks. They are the second largest living shark in the world, but do you know what it feeds on? It eats plankton and krill, some of the smallest creatures in the ocean. Also, their mouth is 4 feet wide! It just swims slowly across the surface of the water with its mouth wide open, which is why it is called a basking shark. The big scary fish in the movie “James and the Giant Peach” was based on the basking shark. However, real life basking sharks are not made of metal, do not eat peaches and they do not shoot harpoons out of their mouths.

In my opinion, this is a fantastic book. It has a lot of knowledge and information that most people might not know of. There are many other creatures it talks about, like the vampire lamprey and the great white shark. I like the variety of animals it talks about. I suggest this book to basically anyone wanting to know more about marine life. It is just a really good book.

[MK · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must-read shark encyclopedia for anyone who loves sharks.
I'm a self-taught oceanographer, so I was very satisfied with the amount of useful information.

Sharks, with their huge bodies, large mouths and fangs, may give the impression to many people that they are ferocious, but after reading this book I could find that this is not the case.

Sharks are at the top of the food chain in the marine environment, playing an important role in maintaining healthy marine ecosystems while regulating prey populations.

After sharks die, an important process called ocean decomposition begins, and its body plays an amazing role in the ocean ecosystem.

Shark carcasses sink to the ocean floor, carrying essential nutrients such as minerals and nitrogen, and over time, shark carcasses break down into smaller particles.

It then becomes a valuable nutrient that feeds plankton, including scavenger fish, crustaceans, and deep-sea bacteria.

Shark carcasses sometimes end up on the ocean floor, where they are eaten by a variety of scavengers, including hagfish, crabs, and benthic fish.

Shark carcasses are recycled back into the ecosystem as nutrients, allowing new life to flourish.

So the process of ocean decomposition of shark carcasses and recycling of nutrients is critical to the health and productivity of marine ecosystems.

May all living things be happy.

[RumBelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love sharks, or unusual sea creatures, or both, this is the book for you!

Highlighting 80 sharks, along with a variety of other creatures such as various types of jellyfish, the octopus, the sperm whale and more, this book takes you on a grand tour of the ocean.

Illustrations were mostly photos of the animals, along with, in certain cases, x-ray looks inside some of the animals portrayed. Many of the photos were really close up, so you could see the animal in incredible detail. Lots of different information was presented for each creature from it's physical makeup, to diet, to territory, this book really was broad in what it talked about. The text was easily readable, and in short paragraphs, so not too dense.

This was a fun book to flip through, you could also read it cover to cover and learn a lot.

[A Allen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book talks much more than just sharks, including seahorses, crabs, penguins, sea cucumbers, garden eels, sea otters, turtles, walruses, sea snakes, and more; I think "Creatures of the Deep" should have been the main title instead of the subtitle. There is a lot of information provided; I marked the book as abandoned because I did not have time to read it from cover to cover. While skimming the book, however, I noticed that Harvey uses the word "starfish" and I believe scientists are calling them "sea stars" these days instead; this is not a huge deal to me, but it does make me wonder if some of the information is dated given that this book was published nearly ten years ago.

[Diana Ho · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this for my son last Christmas (he was nearly three). I think that it would best suit any student/child from age 7+. There is a lot of interesting, and brief, information about sharks and other sea creatures in this book. Great images and descriptions, as well as infographic depictions of sea creatures regarding size, feeding tendencies, population, migration, etc.

If you are looking for an encyclopedia specifically on sharks, this title would definitely be too broad. My son was initially disappointed that it featured other animals but has grown to enjoy it tremendously.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simple to read, yet filled with tons of interesting facts. Even as someone who has read about and studied sharks for some time, there were plenty of information in this book I didn't already know. The best part, however, are the amazing color photographs that fill this books oversized pages. This is a must-have for all shark lovers.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

A current favorite of my budding marine biologist. "There's a lemon shark, that's a basking shark", etc etc. Support their interests, I say. DK makes great informational books, thorough, and photos are great. A Christmas gift from my parents.

[Rena Hua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great information. Could give more on anatomy.

[Jerry]

bad

[John]

spent a while going through it favourite shark is the bronze whaler.

[Rowan Jaffe]

From Sara & Nadia

[Gnocchi Unicorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learnt a lot. This book was great

[Kayla Upchurch · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was very educational and loved reading it with my son

[Alyse Dzek · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good book and it gave a lot of good facts about sharks but it doesn't but them in order

[Christine H · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars for this one!

My love for DK grows more and more every school year with each of their awesome non-fic titles, and Super Shark Encyclopedia and Other Creatures of the Deep (pubbed June 2015) fits snugly in my list of great DK books. All of my students loved looking through this trove of information, and while some people enjoyed reading the pages devoted to the different sharks and other sea creatures that infest our ocean waters, a great many more loved simply looking (and admiring) the colourful (and sometimes icky) illustrations on almost every page.

My favourite feature was the one-off box found on some of the pages, which called out a particular species and gave just enough trivia to interest me in reading more. There’s so much to learn here, that it can easily take an entire summer to truly digest the meaty Super Shark Encyclopedia. But I bet you’ll love it so much that it won’t take you very long to go through it. But I bet, just as much, that you’ll come back to this book over and over again because of the valuable resource that this is.

I anticipate long waiting lists to borrow this book from our library.

Thank you, DK Publishing, for sending me a copy of Super Shark Encyclopedia in exchange for an honest review. All opinions and suggestions expressed herein are entirely my own.

The original (and picture-filled) version of this review can be found at https://squinklebooks.wordpress.com.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super Shark Encyclopedia is a beautiful, informative and fun book for middle school children who want to learn about sharks and other sea creatures; crabs, shrimp, penguins, octopus, starfish, etc. In lively prose and with gorgeous pictures (I used Bluefire reader) it is focused on five themes: amazing anatomy (the Lefteye Flounder has two left eyes!), survival in the sea, animal athletes, supernatural senses and exploring the deep which refers to the varying and unusual creatures that live deep in the ocean floor. Each fish is fully described and comes with a box of "stats and facts" which describe the most fascinating information about that particular creature of the deep as well as an "At a Glance" page which tells about its size, habitat, location and diet. I was wowed by the information and by the respect and love shown for these alluring and magnificent beings. DK books are always visually beautiful and for that reason I recommend that you buy the actual book instead of the Kindle version. Although it is wonderful to look at on an e reader I think it would be more spectacular if you could see the full two page pictures at once. Thank you to Edelweiss for allowing me to review this book.

[Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A large book with large illustrations of sharks, whales, jellyfish, eels, and other strange creature from under the surface of the ocean. There's not a lot of detail about each creature so it's just a superficial look but a good one. This is especially nice for children.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, with an engaging selection of facts and data, but light on information.