Nic Bishop Lizards (review)

Lizards: they're scaly, they're cold-blooded, and, in the hands of master nature documentarian Bishop, they're both gorgeous and fascinating. You'd think the continued excellence of the Nic Bishop photoessay series (Nic Bishop Butterflies and Moths, BCCB 5/09, etc.) would have made it hard for new entries to impress, but this one is just as absorbing and gasp-worthy as the first. The text is confiding and stylish, with a personal approach that's hard to resist: the dwarf gecko "is small enough to curl up on your thumbnail.… In fact, it has most of the same organs as you." Not only is the prose rich with just such telling detail, it manages to answer key reader questions just as the reader formulates them, covering an amazing amount of lizard-inhabited ground in its modest page count. Bishop's already stunning photographs are helped by a layout that's particularly thoughtfully crafted, so that poses vary pleasingly from spread to spread and background colors are chosen with meticulous care, setting each photograph like a jewel. Even veteran viewers of the arresting grotesquerie of the lizard world will see some new and fresh images. Several photographs of chameleons display some of their lesser-snapped color phases: an elegant veiled chameleon, zapping his tongue out unerringly for cricket collection, is tastefully patterned in muted Santa Fe colors; a panther chameleon frontin' for his lady glows with sunset orange. In a magical, slightly comical foldout sequence, a basilisk bipedally scampers across the water surface with the haste, inclined posture, and intent focus of a commuter chasing after a departing bus. As with the rest of this series, this title will sell itself—just silently show off a few pages of lizardy goodness and you won't be able to keep the book on the shelf. A closing note offers some intriguing detail about Bishop's photograpy process; an index, a brief list of further reading, and a short glossary are also included.