Illustrations are in soft focus, with stippled green and brown landscapes, though some of the animals are hard to spot within these environs. The franchise has been notoriously hit and miss since the 1978 sci-fi action film hit the big screen, with no lead living up to the enormous, muscular boots that Arnie left. Content and cadence are cleverly aligned with the actual behaviors of the animals, and the structure and layouts of the poems also echo traits of the creatures: the words in the blue jay poem are spaced apart, and readers must move their heads back and forth to read them, mimicking the jay’s head movements as it ponders its choice of meal. Prey is the latest film in the Predator series, and it might just be as good as the original. A blue jay ponders which of two nearly identical butterflies to consume (“One is poison / one is sweet. / How do I choose / which one to eat?”).

A motionless Pacific rattlesnake (“I am patient. / I am primed”) waits for a chance to strike a chattering ground squirrel (“Flag waving, / I boldly scold: / ‘Hey you! Get off my lawn!’”). Animal antagonists express their behaviors and needs in a variety of creative poetic formats, sometimes in direct confrontation on a single page, sometimes separated across a double-page spread, and twice portrayed in wordless spreads with gatefolds that open to reveal the poems underneath. Predator: Prey, the book finds Machiko Noguchi bored with her life as a low-level corporate employee on a quiet colony world, having left the Yautja pack she joined following events on Ryushi. gīuhrman-Deever imagines the relationships between predators and prey as poetic standoffs. Predator: Hunters Planet is a 1994 novel written by David Bischoff and published by Bantam Spectra. Primary, Intermediate Candlewick Studio 32 pp. Predator and Prey: A Conversation in Verseīy Susannah Buhrman-Deever illus.

Prey vs predator book