For Ages 4-8. Any book by science writer Sy Montgomery (The Soul of an Octopus, 2016; The Good Good Pig, 2007) will be readable, packed with information, ,just a generally good read. She has the rare ability to write to children as well as adults, without in any way talking down to them, rather informing, as she does in this rather remarkable and elegantly presented primer on turtles. I’ve not come across her illustrator, Matt Patterson, before but he is a perfect match for this in this book,, producing meticulously accurate and detailed drawings of a host of turtles, from small (the three-inch long speckled padloper tortoise, native to Namibia and western South Africa) to large (the leatherback sea turtle, at 2,000 pounds and up to seven feet long, the fourth heaviest species of reptile alive today [three species of crocodiles weigh more]). Drawings and text show how the turtle’s body is put together. The giant tortoise in the Seychelles can live up to 250 years. Turtles can learn to negotiate mazes and respond to light cues and touch a platform with its flipper to get food. Some hunt, others can climb a chain-link fence. And they talk to each other, the babies of some species starting even before they’re out of the egg. “In the movie Jurassic Park, one of the sounds the velociraptors make is actually a soundtrack of tortoises mating.”) And they have personalities, from shy and reclusive to sociable, wanting their shells scratched or bellies rubbed. The book ends with a [plea to help us preserve these precious cohabitors of our earth and a primer on what we can do to help. The last sentence in the book: “Stepping in to protect [turtles] gives us humans aa great opportunity: it lets us take our turn to uphold the health of our planet.” If you have a child or grandchild, niece or young neighbor, aged four to eight, this is as good a book as you could get for them as a present.