Reviews

“Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator is a children’s picturebook about the fascinating wolfsnail, a carnivorous mollusk that hunts and eats snails and slugs. Striking, full-color photographs of an actual wolfsnail on the hunt illustrate this amazing and educational story. The final three pages include more snail facts (including the tragic tale of how the wolfsnail was imported to Hawaii to combat another invading snail, but ate native Hawaiian snails instead) and a glossary of snail words. An excellent introduction to the wonders of natural life that can be found in an ordinary backyard.”

“The pacing of the spare text moves, appropriately, at a snail’s pace, conveying with a phrase or sentence per page the wolfsnail’s deliberate and single-minded focus on food. Each step is illustrated with an exceptional close-up photograph that brings into sharp focus the glistening snail body, the ridges of its shell, and every nook and cranny of the hosta leaves on which the attack occurs. There are no punches pulled in this account—the victim succumbs in slow motion over four pages, and all that remains is an empty shell.”

“A snail may seem an unlikely candidate for most ferocious predator, but the wolfsnail certainly deserves consideration. … A few lines of text per page accompany bright, close-up color photographs that not only detail the snail’s search for its prey (leaf-eating snails and slugs leave detectable trails of slime), but also the prey’s demise.”

“There is indeed such an animal, which eats other snails, and Sarah and Richard Campbell have made its doings quite visible.”