Review by Frank Plowright

Survival of the Fittest is a disguised form of education for young readers explaining how the animal world is researched for concepts applicable to human technology, with writer Rebecca Donnelly supplying notes and links in the back. It’s formatted as a TV talent show, with each contestant making a presentation to a panel of shark judges, and the opening sequence is always a wordless scene of the assorted creatures arriving at the TV studio. It transmits as padding rather than scene-setting.

Even allowing for the simplicity of Survival of the Fittest being aimed at young readers, Misa Saburi’s art lacks appeal. The animals fill panels to avoid drawing backgrounds and they’re very basic forms. A kingfisher features explaining how their beak shape has been adapted for high speed trains as per the sample art. Almost every form of kingfisher is bright and colourful, some exceptionally so, yet Saburi has selected the speckled black crested kingfisher as the example, the dullest looking of the species. Neither is Saburi the best at conveying what’s happening during wordless sequences. It affected the post show scenes in Who’s Got the Best Medicine? and does so again here.

Almost all the examples supplied by Donnelly concern the affects of air on moving vehicles. The faster anything travels the greater air drag limits speed, and the effects of compressed air can also be extremely noisy. Fish and birds are naturally endowed with means of overcoming this, owls being exceptionally silent killers.

As with the previous books, the information Donnelly supplies is fascinating, but the jokes punctuating the displays rely on the biggest of the shark judges also being enthusiastically dim. It deliberately contrasts the sophistication of the information, but sparkling it’s not.