An unseen narrator warns of Great White Shark\u2019s \u201ctoothy scowl,\u201d though Filipina\u2019s illustration shows a disarmingly goofy grin and googly eyes. Cuttlefish, Flounder, Dresser Crab, Leafy Dragon, and Octopus immediately exhibit their camouflage or concealment skills and escape being eaten. With no hiding place left, Puffer Fish seems a goner. The little fish then inflates, turning into a bristly \u201cspiky sphere,\u201d and the mighty predator hastily withdraws. Before Great White can hunt down another victim, he himself quails under the shadow of a pod of killer whales, hiding just in time. A four-beat quatrain details each animal\u2019s technique; the first two lines are repeated in the following stanza, with the refrain \u201cWhew, he\u2019s safe and sound.\u201d (Or, alternatively, she.) Filipina\u2019s art is exuberant, the ocean floor a riot of deep pastels, and the style, while cartoonish, is also accurate. Noting that \u201cit\u2019s a dogfish-eat-dogfish ocean out there,\u201d backmatter explains that sharks are occasionally prey for orcas and gives the proper names and descriptions for the evasive tactics these fish (and mollusks, cephalopods, and crustaceans) have deployed, among them countershading, inking, burial, and self-decoration. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An unseen narrator warns of Great White Shark\u2019s \u201ctoothy scowl,\u201d though Filipina\u2019s illustration shows a disarmingly goofy grin and googly eyes. Cuttlefish, Flounder, Dresser Crab, Leafy Dragon, and Octopus immediately exhibit their camouflage or concealment skills and escape being eaten. With no hiding place left, Puffer Fish seems a goner. The little fish then inflates, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}