Changing Shape; Making a Nest

Birds do it, bees do it, gorillas, moles and chimpanzees do it, according to this lively collection of nesting examples from across the animal kingdom. We discover that, like turtles, jackass penguins dig holes in the ground, termites build temples of earth taller than a 'bus and squirrels have both summer and winter dreys.

Changing Shape shows us maggot to fly, tadpole to frog and the gradual flattening of a striped sole - among many others. It also, incidentally, shows us how apiarists change shape when they don their protective beekeeping gear.

Quite why the series is called 'Nature's Secrets' I don't know - everyone knows nests, and poets have been celebrating metamorphosis since Ovid - although I see we have hibernation and pollination to come so the justification may be eventual. Actually these two immensely likeable volumes are little more than a very well and widely selected collection of pictures with fulsome captions, the kind of thing you could make yourself - now there's an idea!

For those in need of further ideas but not new spectacles, there are some small-print 'notes for ... teachers' at the back, but these are no bar to the books' imaginative use.