Markle follows her Animal Predators series, which was named a 2005 Booklist Top 10 Nonfiction Series for Youth, and her Animal Scavengers books with a new series that focuses on yet another strand of the food chain: Animal Prey. As in Markle's previous series, this title about octopuses, both predator and prey, features eye-popping color photographs of the animals on nearly every spread. Markle's lively prose brings readers right into the underwater world with sensory descriptions and details kids can relate to. The "pale twilight glow" filtering into an octopus' den is easy to imagine, as is the garbage pile of shells outside the octopus' door. Markle skillfully inserts facts about octopus anatomy, habitat, behavior, reproduction, and species into vivid descriptions of animals on the move, hunting for prey while eluding their own predators.
