Crabphabetical! The Crab Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta

DEAR READER,

We crabs are tired of books about cute penguins and colorful butterflies.

Enough with the cutesy critters, the crabs complain. CRABS ARE COOL.

They are decopods--animals with ten feet (eight legs and two claws)! How's that for unusual? And if they lose a leg, they grow it back. They have eyes on stalks so they can see in all directions. They have shells for safety and some of them also crawl inside a cast-off shell for extra protection. Crabs can be colorful, or they can go for the camou look. Crabs can be sneaky. Crabs can be scary, even creepy. And yes, they can be (sort of) cute and cool pets, too.

And just in time for the crabs' makeover campaign, that master of the abecedarian picture book, Jerry Pallotta, has his newly published The Crab Alphabet Book (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2019).

With this newest title, author Pallotta continues his career providing outstanding nonfiction books aimed at the the primary grades. Here he comes up with twenty-six crabs in alphabetical order, from the arrow crab to the zebra hermit crab, named for their shapes or markings, and with each one getting its own full-page detailed color illustration by noted artist Tom Leonard. Some crabs specialize in colors: the blue crab is, well, blue; the Christmas Island crabs sport Santa-suit red shells and legs; while the Halloween crab has a natural orange and black coloration. The sneaky decorator crab, however, covers his shell with whatever keeps him covert, be it purple or mossy green seaweed. Ghost crabs, silvery white, come out only at night, while the king crab wears royal scarlet and the little green crab is, well, green.

Size can be a amazing, too. Crabs can be tiny, like the pea-sized oyster crab, or monstrous-sized, like the thirteen-feet-wide Japanese spider crab and the three-feet-wide, burly land-dwelling robber crab. Crabs can be solitary, like the eponymous hermit, or march in armies like the soldier crab. They can be crinkly, like the wrinkled crab, fuzzy like the Yeti crab, or sleek as a fiddler crab.

In Pallotta's latest natural history entry, crabs are unquestionably cool. This humorous, irresistible, and beautiful nonfiction picture book belongs in classroom, school, and public libraries everywhere.

Stayin' Alive! Trickiest! 19 Sneaky Animals by Steve Jenkins

Survival can be tricky.

For most animals, finding food and avoiding danger is a full-time job. A few of them survive by being bigger, stronger, faster, or fiercer than other creatures.

But many animals use tricks to catch their prey or outsmart a predator.

For many animals, trick or treat is the story of their lives. If they're lucky, they trick hungry predators. If they fail, they will be some critter's treat!

Being big and strong and bold has its good points. But maintaining those impressive physiques and power takes a lot of work, and some animals have evolved less taxing ways to avoid danger and perhaps get a square meal at the same time.

That's where being tricky comes in handy.

What if you are a tiny little tree lizard--easy pickings for a big snake or a bird? But if your tail looks looks like a ragged brown leaf, you can hunker down on a tree and blend right in. That's how the diminutive satanic leaf-tailed gecko of Madagascar gets by without getting eaten. The leafy sea dragon, a species of sea horse, uses a similar trick: his shaggy green shape looks just like a piece of floating seaweed. And the western hognose snake takes the trickery even further. He rolls over to play a disgustingly stiff dead snake, even adding a convincing little trickle of blood from his open mouth to gross out a predator.

Looking non-edible works for those guys, but other creatures disguise themselves as something no sensible predator would dare to eat, like the harmless wasp beetle who looks much like a real wasp. Other sneaky animals disguise themselves, not to avoid being a meal, but to get one. The green vine snake twists around a branch like, well, a vine, to fool birds who need a break into becoming a tasty dinner.

And some crafty critters are getaway artists. The squid and octopus disappear in a cloud of black ink. The blue-tailed skink drops part of his bright-colored tail, leaving it wiggling persuasively just long enough to keep a hungry predator busy while the business end of the skink escapes. And some animals find ways to prey on other critters while keeping themselves well out of the way of danger: the archerfish shoots a mouthful of water to bring down a insect on the wing, and the bolas spider, no doubt an inspiration to Spider Man, downs a bug with a sticky strand of web he shoots out to reel his prey right in.

Artist Steve Jenkins gives nineteen sly and sneaky creatures their due in the latest in series, Trickiest!: 19 Sneaky Animals (Extreme Animals) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Done up in his eye-catching trademark paper collage illustrations, Jenkins' slyly humorous text offers diagrams comparing each animal with human size and a world map showing its habitat, and he also appends a glossary, a web of his subjects arranged by shared traits, and a bibliography of additional readings for nature science research.

For animals more deadly than devious, read this one with its companion book, Deadliest!: 20 Dangerous Animals (Extreme Animals) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.)

Be It Ever So Humble...: Homes (Picture This) by Judith Nouvian; translated by Vali Tamm

VILLAGE WEAVER BIRDS LIVE IN A VILLAGE OF HANGING NESTS.

THEY LIKE TO HANG OUT TOGETHER!

Lots of animals like to hang together!

Bees build wax hives--with hexagonal cells that can be used as nurseries for all the babies or as pantries filled with sweet provender.

Sand martins tunnel out their penthouse apartments side by side in the faces of steep cliffs. It's a quick commute to work!

And sociable weaver birds work together to build treetop haystack apartments where they have up to five-hundred friends to hang out with.

But some animals go for single-family houses--from the osprey couple who go it alone in their messy stick-built homes, to the baby bagworm caterpillar who secretes silk and pulls in bits and pieces from the branch for the cocoon where he hangs out until he emerges as a moth. Desert fennec foxes don't need company for warmth, so they dig a solitary burrow below ground to keep cool. And talk about giving the neighbors the cold shoulder! A polar bear moms digs a den down into the ice and snow before her baby is born.

Some animals really work at constructing their homes. Paper wasps have to chew up a lot of dry wood to form their oblong nests. Beavers work (like beavers) all summer to build and stock provender for their underwater winter homes. Bowerbirds scour their landscapes for anything blue to decorate their home--flowers, trash, whatever, so long it is the right hue of blue!  And the industrious little weaver ant spins twigs and leaves together with its own silk to form elegant nests in the trees.

And then there are the squatters. The clownfish has an symbiotic understanding with his landlord, the sea anemone.Don't taze me, bro!

WHICH ANIMAL DOESN'T NEED TO BUILD A HOME?

A TURTLE!

WHEREVER IT GOES, ITS HOME GOES TOO!

Animals have as varied an idea of where to hang their hats as we humans do, as we see in Judith Nouvian's fascinating new picture essay, Homes (Picture This) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015).  Up close and personal photos show these animal homes in detail, from beautiful, sparkling-with-dew spider webs to unsightly but functional beaver dam lodges. A concept book that fits right in with primary units and a nature study that reveals the unlimited variations in animal behaviors for young learners, this is a must-have for the shelves of libraries and early childhood education classrooms.

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.