Island: A Story of the Galápagos by Jason Chin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The graphic design in this book was remarkable, and the palette drew me right in--amazing work on the cover! But the strength in this book is the back-and-forth between full page or full double-page pictures and the many small cameo cutout pictures Chin used on the other pages. This gave the book a graphic novel feel, but also felt like a documentary or a museum presentation. Each of the five chapters handles a major development in the geological history of the islands (in chunks of millions of years), and the interior of the chapter details life during that epoch. Endsheets are great--front endsheet gives a list of species, and the back one a map.
The back matter is informative, but does little to suggest I might encounter information about the Galapagos anywhere else outside this book. The consulting experts were featured clearly and the research was convincing, but I wondered what he had read. The compulsory back matter provided an overview of Darwin and a description of the islands' formation in a more didactic, less imaginative style. The back matter does very little that anyone couldn't do better by going online. In general, I was looking for more sourcing.
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