A hallmark card, it isn't.

For a unique gift for Mom, consider the new book In the Womb: Animals (National Geographic Books, $26). It's the print accompaniment to the latest installment in the critically acclaimed "In the Womb" video series. Premiering on the National Geographic channel Mothe's Day, May 10, 2009, the series reveals through 3-D and 4-D ultrasound technology the "extreme" baby-making methods of sharks, penguins, kangaroos and wasps. In the Womb: Animals follows the gestational journeys of the forementioned menagerie, as well as a golden retriever, a dolphin and an elephant. Science and nature writer Michael Sims authors the book with gripping language and the senses of both wonder and humor necessary to undertake a project of this topic. The in utero photographs are both startling and touching--an elephant suspended in amniotic fluid; a close-up of a fetal sand-tiger shark, its toothy grimace all the scarier when we learn that it fights its siblings to the death--before birth; puppies-in-the-making, with their whisker dots and fuzzy paws.

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The book's details will take up permanent residence in one's imagination, from the fortitude of female elephants, who have the longest gestational period (22 months) and the largest birth weight (270 pounds); to the merciless determination of the parasitic wasp, who injects her eggs into as many as 30 young caterpillars, where her larvae feast and gestate until eating their way out of their unfortunate hosts' bodies; to the promiscuous nature of dolphins, who engage in sexual antics across the age and sex spectrum. We learn that dolphins descended from land animals, elephants originated in the ocean, kangaroo joeys are barely the size of a jellybean when born and penguins share in parenting duties long before the arrival of their offspring, with Dad babysitting the egg while Mom goes fishing. This book will lend any reader a new and entertaining perspective on motherhood.