By Jerry Pallotta
Two big cats, every stat laid out side by side, and a made-up fight at the end that finally settles it.
A lion and a tiger, thirty-two pages, and one question. It goes through them one measurement at a time: weight, bite, claws, top speed, the mane, how each one hunts, how each one has been built to end an argument. Real photographs and Rob Bolster's paintings sit next to each other so your child can see the two animals matched up like boxers on a poster. Then the last few pages stop comparing and put them in the same place at the same time, and one cat kills the other. The book names a winner and doesn't hedge about it.
The verdict is the engine. A child will sit through twenty pages of real animal science, actual bite-force numbers and hunting behavior, because they have been promised an answer at the end and they want to be right. Take the answer away and most of them put the book down. That's the thing to understand about this series, and it's why a child who has read eleven of them wants a twelfth rather than a different sort of book. This one is also a good matchup on its own terms, because lions and tigers are close enough that the facts go back and forth, so the last page is a surprise rather than a formality.