Arthropoda Poesy: Hey There, Stinkbug by Leslie Bulion

Summertime is bugtime! Some, like fireflies and butterflies, have their charms. Some, like wasps and spiders, have their purpose, and some, like stinkbugs--nobody loves 'em, nobody wants 'em. They're better left all on their lonesome!

I think you're lost,
'cause you're walking up my arm,
But I won't tease you,
Wouldn't dare squeeze you--
Please don't trigger
Your stink alarm.

And then, there's the bombadier beetle, a most regrettable, hopefully soon forgettable creature, not glad to meet ya!

Bombadier, bombadier, bombadier beetle,
Slow on the wing, but fast on his feetle.
Blasting poor predators into retreatle,
With pure boiling hot acid it aims from its seatle.

And even those fabulous fireflies, on summer nights so delightful--when you get to know them better, they're a perfectly frightful! The poor blinkin' firefly boys are sometimes blinded by the light!

He'll fly and he'll flash and he'll wait for an answer.
From a FLASH Gal that's eager to meet him.
And up close she's likely to eat him!

For middle readers who may tend to eschew entomology, Leslie Bulion's jolly lessons on common arthropoda are great fun for summer reading that beg to be read aloud. In her twenty chapters author Bulion and artist Leslie Evans provide some delightful graphics, done by the illustrator in linoleum prints of her creepy crawly subjects Along with her highly humorous poesy, the author packs plenty of information into her Hey There, Stink Bug! (Charlesbridge Publishing), including a glossary and bibliography of books and websites, and for poetry fanciers, also appends fascinating descriptions of the various and offbeat poetic forms used in her poetic descriptions.

Camo Bug! Good Trick, Walking Stick! by Sheri Mabry Bestor

Lots of insects use color camouflage to conceal themselves, but one, the walking stick insect, doesn't sport the usual mottled camo colors to fool those that feed on juicy insects. Since she lives on leaves up in the trees, she uses her shape to look like a twig.

Walking stick insects are masters of illusion. Even their eggs, plop-dropping to the ground in the fall, look like seeds, duping diligent ants into taking them underground, safe from winter's chill, to incubate until spring.

GOOD TRICK, WALKING STICK!

Then, with a wiggle and a pop, little walking twiggy stick insects hatch and head for the nearest tree.

[They look just like adult walking stick insects. Although they begin tiny, some walking stick insects grow to be among the largest insects in the world!]


Outgrowing their body cases as they munch their way up the trees, they simply jettison their shells, and keep on growing as they keep on going up their tree, blending in with the twigs and leaves of the foliage, aided by the suction cups on their feet. Of course, once in a while a sharp-eyed bird spots movement and picks one off the branch for dinner. But the walking stick insect has a trick to fix that! She squirts out some foul-smelling juice.

GOOD TRICK, WALKING STICK!

Of course, sometimes the hungry bird makes off with a leg or so, but who cares!  This insect can easily grow a new leg!

[That trick is called autotomy!]

GOOD TRICK, WALKING STICK!

And if the birds are too many in her tree, the walking stick is so light that she can drop from the tree to the ground and make like a fallen twig.

[And if all that fails, walking stick insects can change color, growing pale in the sun and dark as night comes on to make them invisible. Oh, and some walking stick insects have colorful wings that they can flash to frighten predators on the ground.]

GOOD TRICK, WALKING STICK!

And there are still more tricks in the walking stick insect's bag of behaviors (including parthenogenesis), in Sheri Mabry Bestor's Good Trick Walking Stick (Sleeping Bear Press), a fascinating collection of tricks for that versatile insect illusionist. And aided by the lovely illustrations of artist Johnny Lambert, Bestor's book has a little trick up its stylistic sleeve: along with large, engaging illustrations that flow through the pages, the author uses an engagingly simple text, punctuated by the catch phrase "Good trick, walking stick," which young kids in a reading circle will quickly begin to chant, but the narration also features additional entomological information in a different font on each page, making this non-fiction book function as both a read-aloud book for younger students or as a source of information for older student's science reports. Says School Library Journal, "A fun, informative offering about a little-known insect that is sure to delight readers. Recommended for most collections."

For more easy-going entomological education, pair this one with Bestor's and Lambert's companion book, Fly High Butterfly.

Hear Life Murmur or See It Glisten! Some Bugs by Angela DiTerlizzi

SOME BUGS BUILD

SOME BUGS MAKE

SOME BUGS HUNT

AND SOME BUGS TAKE.

It's a jungle out there!

Paper wasps build light, strong, homey hives. Some spiders make webs, and jumping spiders hunt. And columns of ants take whatever they want back home with them.

Grasshoppers glide, and leaf hoppers hide. Spiders bite, and Hercules bugs fight, locking horns in battle. Caterpillars crawl, while a sow bug rolls into a ball.

And just where can all this action be found?

..KNEEL DOWN CLOSE.

LOOK VERY HARD,

AND FIND SOME BUGS

IN YOUR BACKYARD.

How to identify all these busy bugs? Angela di Terlizzi's Some Bugs (Beach Lane Books, 2014) offers all of these creepy, crawly, flitting critters, along with an appendix, What's That Bug? with thumbnail drawings and names and information about her cast of characters--thrips, nymphs, earwigs and all. But DiTerlizzi's jolly verses almost take a back seat to the absolutely cutest bugs in non-fiction picture book land, created by artist Brendan Wenzel in fabulous design and colors that are fascinating to follow from page to page. Superstar illustrator-author Eric Carle calls this one "a delightful combination of pictures and words," and Publishers Weekly stars it and says, "Readers will feel transported to a summer day, when the air is musical and life is literally buzzing."

Crawly Critters! Creep and Flutter: The Secret World of Insects and Spiders by Jim Arnosky

Get outside, keep your eyes open, and "be mindful of the small" is notable nature illustrator Jim Arnosky's advice, and his latest stunningly illustrated field guide, Creep and Flutter: The Secret World of Insects and Spiders (Sterling Books, 2012) will make young readers want to do just that.

This illustrated guide to many of North America's insects and spiders, with its accessible and absorbing text and many colorful fold-out pages (and two giant double-page gatefolds (opening to a four-page spread) as well) will provide the motivation and the background for nature study in backyards and local fields, woods, and pond areas. Insects and spiders are shown in large, detailed paintings, some more than life-sized, each with a handy life-size silhouette to keep things in perspective.

Arnosky includes chapters on flies (dragonflies, mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies), not skimping on all stages of the metamorphosis for the insect clan from egg, to nymph, to pupae and adult phases. Butterfly illustrations, as gorgeous as their subjects, earn wows, while the eight-legged arachnids (spiders and ticks) and the likewise formidably equipped bee and wasp families will evoke a few yikes! on their own.

Arnosky points out that this group of creatures compose “the largest biomass on Earth,” a staggering thought which will engender respect, if not affection, for nature's creepy crawly critte4rs out there. An indispensable book for elementary and middle school nature study, Arnosky's Creep and Flutter: The Secret World of Insects and Spiders pairs perfectly with Steve Jenkin's also just published The Beetle Book Houghton Mifflin, 2012) (see my recent review here.)

"... Another splendid invitation to children to explore the natural world," reports Kirkus Reviews.

Arnosky's previous notable books in his Sterling series are Slither and Crawl: Eye to Eye with Reptiles, Thunder Birds: Nature's Flying Predators, and Wild Tracks!: A Guide to Nature's Footprints.

Un-beatable! The Beetle Book by Steve Jenkins

Line up every plant and animal on Earth ...

... and one of every four will be a beetle.

If ever Nature awarded a Grand Prix Award for design, the winner going away would be the beetle, an oft-maligned species, with a body style that frequently draws yucks! and eeuuuwws!!! from humans for its everyday mini-specimens and which, in its super-sized version, such as the nine-inch titan beetle, is worthy of blood-curdling shrieks.

In what is estimated to be a million varieties, many undocumented, beetles all sport the same standard insect body parts in roughly the same configuration, all possessed of their signature wing casings which protect their delicate wings and provide an often predator-proof armor for their abdomens.

Within that conformation, however, their myriad variations in relative size--from the tiny eggplant flea beetle to the afore-mentioned titan--in antennae, leg adaptations, camouflaged color configurations, and jaw adaptations, from herbivore- to carnivore-friendly, make the beetle one of the most diversified and adaptable of life forms.

Steve Jenkins' forthcoming The Beetle Book (Houghton Mifflin, 2012) takes advantage of this diversification in delicately detailed illustrations which combine photographic detail with brilliantly colored drawings that makes these often shunned animals appear as the splendidly designed creations that they are.

No fiddlehead fern has more delicacy than the appropriately named featherhorn beetle, and no movie monster closeup is more horrifying than the victim's-eye view of the business end--the cruel jaws--of the six-spotted tiger beetle which Jenkins presents up close and personal, ready to crunch its hapless prey. From impressionistic color-blocking worthy of any modern art gallery to plain-Jane gray-brown which blends with bark, their camouflage coats are infinite and their chemical powers amazing, and from the tiniest eggplant flea beetle to the jumbo African goliath, so big it is kept as a pet, beetles can't be beat as wonders of nature.

""A richly varied and visually riveting introduction to beetles, both familiar and strange." says Booklist's starred review. "Distinguished both as natural history and work of art" echoes the starred review in Kirkus.

Feel Free to Bug Me! I Love Bugs! by Emma Dodd

I LOVE ALL BUGS...BIG BUGS AND SMALL
BUGS.

I LOVE SLIMY, CRAWLY, CREEPY BUGS!

Few kids are neutral on bugs. Some love 'em and some hate 'em, and our young narrator here adores them--all kinds of bugs.

I LOVE HARD, SPIKY, SPINY BUGS AND PRETTY SHINY BUGS.

I LOVE FUZZY,SUNNY, HONEY BUGS AND FURRY, WHIRRY, SPINY BUGS.

And with the help of author and artist Emma Dodd's blythly illustrated new
I Love Bugs (Holiday House, 2010), even bugophobes can come to appreciate the variety--color, size, shape, and abilities of bugs, Dodd doesn't bother with taxonomy--insect or arachnid, they're all bugs and they're all good to our enthusiastic narrator, who enjoys the spooky aspect of some of these critters:

EIGHT-LEGGED, SCARY BUGS.

HANG-FROM-THE-CEILING, SEND-ME-SCREAMING BUGS!!

Dodd's illustrations get right down on ground level with the your bugologist as he peers close up at the objects of his affection--ants, bees, stag beetles, grasshoppers, caterpillars, and spiders, done up in kid-friendly flat, bright illustrations that put the critter under consideration stage center. Pair this book with Denise Fleming's lively and biologically correct Beetle Bop (see my 2007 review here) for a beginning science lesson on a subject for which it is NOT difficult to come up with suitable specimens for study!

Cuisine a la' extreme: Bug-a-licious by Meish Goldish

Of course, not everyone eats insects. The idea makes some people sick. One eater's "yuck!" is another eater's "yum!"

Lick a cricket? Somebody must. Cricket Lick-Its are lollipops with once-live crickets encased in various sweet fruit-flavored lollies, marketed, along with chocolate-covered ants (where else?) in California. If your taste runs to the savory rather than the sweet, just zoom over the border into Mexico, where you can buy bags of fried grasshoppers or fold them into your 'hopper and avocado tacos, spiced up with lemon juice, garlic, and salt. While you're south of the border, try out their leaf-footed bug pizzas, too. After all, insects are said to be a good source of protein, vitamins, and minerals--and low-fat to boot, making leaf-hopper pizza healthier than pepperoni!

Meish Goldish's Bug-a-licious (Extreme Cuisine)(Bearport Publishing, 2009) explores the world of insect snacks--from stink-bug pate' in South Africa to wasp-rich crackers in Japan and from honey ants in Australia to roasted termites in Nigeria. After all, insects are always trying to bite us. Why not show them that we sometimes bite back?

If your taste doesn't run to Thailand's three-inch batter-fried water bugs in plum sauce, there are plenty of other delicacies in Bearport's Extreme Cuisine series, including Spider-Tizers and Other Creepy Treats (Extreme Cuisine), Baby Bug Dishes (Extreme Cuisine), and Mammal Menu (Extreme Cuisine), as well as the forthcoming Shocking Seafood and Slithery, Slimy, Scaly Treats. All are illustrated lavishly with all-too-clear color photos of these exotic foodstuffs from all around the globe. Part gross-out browser, part sophisticated educational travel book, the Extreme Cuisine series is definitely not your father's nonfiction, but well suited to the tastes of some!

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.