Despite being completely nonfiction, this title reads with all the suspense and mystery of any great novel. The story begins in 1996, when Karen Lips travels to a high mountain forest in Panama to study the golden frogs that live there. Upon discovering a large amount of dead frogs, Karen collects a few of them and later learns that a fungus is to blame for the frogs' death. Over the next decade, Project Golden Frog is launched and put into motion in order to collect and protect Panama's golden frogs until the fungus can be understood and controlled. The book concludes with a survey of the ongoing mystery, relating scientists' efforts to study the fungus in order to return the frogs to the wild. Booklist heralds this title as “notable for clarity, directness, and simplicity of writing and design alike.”
