Bears ¦ Pandas ¦ Seals ¦Tigers

Polar bear cubs don't learn to swim until their second year, whereas young tigers can manage the shallow end at six weeks - almost as soon as they can walk. Walking takes the young giant panda three months, but their it starts life 1000 times lighter than its mother, who must eat bamboo for fourteen hours every day to maintain her weight . . .

At first sight a series of cute and cuddly picture books, this clutch uses infancy to provide an introduction to adult lifestyle - a pleasant if not unfamiliar device. None of the four, however, start an stay with just one baby - a wide variety of families and (apart from giant pandas) species is involved, allowing the reader to build up a better picture of what is a bear/seal/panda/tiger than would an individual biography. A mix of paintings and photographs illustrates the friendly text into which the author's skill allows her to introduced bizarre facts without hamming it up - so we find out that seals sleep vertically afloat and that the noise of a sloth bear sucking up termites can be heard a furlong away.

'Baby animals' is so often a cup-out for the 'anything does for kids' school of publishing, that it's refreshing to find this series offering so much more. Definitely shareable.