Buggie Woogie: Beetle Bop by Denise Fleming

Striped beetles, spotted beetles,
All-over-dotted beetles.
Brown beetles, green beetles,
Not-often-seen beetles....
Chewing beetles, sawing beetles,
Noisily gnawing beetles.

Caldecott winning author/artist Denise Fleming takes a generally shunned critter, the lowly and sometimes homely beetle, places her artistically rendered images of them atop a beautiful fibrous collage background, and in step with her chanting, bouncing rhymes, forces us to take a close and appreciative look at the much maligned creepy-crawly beetle in her new picture book Beetle Bop.

Fleming's beetles--fireflies, stag beetles, click beetles, et al--seem to dance right off the page in her celebration of all things beetle-ish! In one terrific spread describing "blue beetles, black beetles, hiding-in-the-crack beetles," Fleming shows just a bit of a child's foot, with five pudgy toes, near a tiny beetle cowering inside a concrete crack. Even the lettering in her text zaps and zags around the page like the creatures themselves, first a flip, then a flop, now fly, as beetles bop!

As she did in her Caldecott Honor Book In The Small, Small Pond, Fleming takes one area of nature science and with her engaging illustrations and energetic text makes her own teachable moment come alive for young children.