Those young readers who appreciate graphic photographs and things others might describe as gross will especially enjoy this book. Its layout is both attractive and at times confusing. Some pages make it difficult for readers to see connections between material. ( )

This book has very colorful photographs of the slime producers and their slime, from water, lungfish, hagfish, sea cucumbers, sea slugs, sea hares, frogspawn, slimy stuff on land, poison arrow frogs, and others.

PSC REVIEW: If the title doesn’t attract readers the slimy looking slug on the cover will. There’s a lot of slime out there. Of course, the Pacific Northwest’s banana slug is right up there, getting an 8 on the slime-ometer. Others may be familiar to readers like the sea slug. But the book doesn’t stop with the familiar. There are foam-nest frogs and lung fish. Divided into sections by location of the slime –land, water, and other slime --it includes fungus like the lattice stinkhorn. Photos really do enhance the text in this book. The big wad of phlegm awaiting the reader in the introductory chapter is so realistic you don’t want to put your hand there. Good choice not to touch it. According to this book, phlegm rates the highest of any slime on the slime-ometer. I wish they had been given more information about the California newt. It says that 1 gram of tetrodotoxin (cyanide) in the slime is enough to kill 2,000 adult humans. I found this alarming because California newts are pets as well. Further reading led to the information that this must be ingested to kill, but even so there has to be more to this California newt story. ( )