ONE TINY TURTLE. By Nicola Davies. Illustrated by Jane Chapman.

CARLO LIKES READING. By Jessica Spanyol. Walker Books pound;10.99 each. TES Direct pound;9.99 each.

A host of different writing styles is to be found where science and fiction meet. Some bore us with monotonous detail, others venture too far into self-consciously creative language. But Nicola Davies is an author - and a zoologist - who gets the balance exactly right in Bat Loves the Night and One Tiny Turtle.

Her scientific love of the particular - she has studied mammals, we are told, from whales in the Indian Ocean to bats in Wales - translates into the precise, well-chosen language that so appeals to children. There is not a word too many; there is not a word out of place.

I particularly enjoyed the bat book, in which Davies brings her bat to life through meticulous observation - “with a sound like a tiny umbrella opening, she flaps her wings” - and the minimum of anthropomorphism (ably assisted by the illustrator). Her description of “echolocation” - the way the bat uses sound to find its way - develops into an extended metaphor, simultaneously puzzling and fascinating: “She beams her voice around her like a torch, and the echoes come singing back ... Gliding and fluttering back and forth, she shouts her torch of sound amongst the trees, listening for her supper.”

In both books, the combination of Davies’s near-poetic narrative with supplementary, factual information (the Walker format for this series), works well and the illustrations are always a pleasure.

Carlo Likes Reading (left) by Jessica Spanyol is somewhat shorter on narrative interest, but plays charmingly with the idea of every object in a house being labelled - so that Carlo, a young giraffe, can read breakfast (rolls, jug, apron, cat food, etc), read the bathroom, and even read Dad (bottom, neck, leg, leg, leg, leg). Beginner readers will benefit from adult input, and might have appreciated more simple, phonic-based vocabulary. But children and adults alike will enjoy the last page of the book - “And he loves galloping” - with not a word label in sight.

Diana Hinds