Florida's Burmese Pythons: Squeezing the Everglades

Gr 3–5—Covering multiple aspects of a fascinating topic, each title in this excellent set examines a single invasive species. Each selection opens with a current example of the animal's impact and then traces the history of its arrival and provides reasons for its proliferation. The writing is lively and direct and makes good use of specific, intriguing facts, such as the brown tree snake's effect on Guam's electricity. Readers will appreciate learning about efforts being made to deal with the problem, such as traps to reduce the feral pig population. Among the other strong features are frequent quotes from scientists in the field. Page layouts include a well-chosen mixture of large photographs and spot images. One spread, for instance, demonstrates the diversity of the cane toad's diet using separate photos of the creatures feasting on a smaller toad, pet food, and a kangaroo carcass.