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.

Strange Bedfellows? How to Clean A Hippopotamus: A Look at Unusual Animal Partnerships by Steve Jenkins

Why does a plover stroll into a crocodile's mouth?

And why would coyotes and badgers hang out together?

Why does the boxer crab make like a cheerleader, waving anemones in its claws like pom-poms?

Why does a warthog drop and roll over when he meets a mongoose?

All of these strange pairs are engaged in symbiotic partnerships, patterns developed in nature when two very unlike species engage in seemingly uncharacteristic behaviors for mutual benefit.

Crocodiles will munch anything that walks, swims, or flies that they can get their teeth into...except the little plover, called the toothpick bird. Crocodiles lie down and open wide for this daring little bird which walks right into that snaggly smile zone to chow down on tidbits stuck in the croc's teeth. Voila'! Dental hygiene done right!

The little boxer crab picks small anemones and waves them in the face of predators, who love crab nuggets but hate being stung by anemones, and the anemones enjoy the floating fragments of food that the crabs drop.  And warthogs, troubled by ticks, lie down and let a team of mongoose pick off  those pesky parasites, their favorite party tidbits. Oxpicker birds do the same for giraffes and rhinos.

Nature has many odd couples of unlike animals which find each other's company has survival value. Egrets, whose diet is big on grasshoppers, ride around on the backs of antelopes, picking off the bugs that their four-footed transports stir up, meanwhile using their elevated positions to peer around for predators, sounding the alarm when big cats come prowling.

Coyotes and badgers actually play tag team when they're just dying to dine on prairie dog. The badger digs down and stand guard in the backdoor of the burrow while the coyote chases the colony in by the front door, and soon the panicked prairie dogs are easy pickings on both ends.  A small bird called the honeyguide follows a loaded bee to its hive, flies back to summons the honey badger and lead him to the nest, and when the badger uses his strong claws to break open the hive, they both feast together on the sweet treat within.

Steve Jenkins' and Robin Page's just-published  How to Clean a Hippopotamus: A Look at Unusual Animal Partnerships (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) uses Jenkins' illustrative skill to picture these amazing animal partners.  The book's page design utilizes panels to demonstrate how these partnerships work to mutual advantage, ending with that mutually symbiotic relationship most familiar to children, that of human and dog.  An appendix explains the types of symbiosis and  summarizes the basic facts--size, habitat, and diet--of  the fifty-four featured animals, from ants to giraffes, clownfish to wolves.  A mutual partnership themselves, as a couple Jenkins and Page are among the most successful of nature writers for young people, engaging them with enticing mysteries and award-winning artistry, as shown in earlier books such as What Do You Do When Something Wants To Eat You?,  Jenkins' splendidly illustrated The Beetle Book, (see review here), and their My First Day (see my recent review here).

School Library Journal passes out more than a pair of kudos to Jenkins' and Page's latest mutual effort: "This title is another outstanding offering from this extraordinarily talented, wonderfully symbiotic couple."

Bottoms Up!: Animals Upside Down by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

WHAT DO SPIDERS, BATS, AND BIRDS OF PARADISE HAVE IN COMMON?

Along with many other creatures, they turn upside down. A few of them, in fact, spend most of their lives that way.

But animals go bottoms-up for different reasons.

The upside-down jellyfish rests, tentacle-side up, its head planted on the floor of the ocean, masquerading as a water plant, with its tendrils drifting back and forth with the current until an unwary prey floats into its reach.  Then--ZAP--it's meal time!

Mallards dabble upside down, with only their cute little duck tails above water, using their wide bills to forage on the muddy bottom for a ducky dinner.

The sparrowhawk flies right side up... until it spots a snack-sized bird for its breakfast. Birds are programmed to watch for raptors from above, so this small hawk flips in flight and mounts its sneak attack from  the prey's  blind side below.  And since bats can't reach airspeed right side up, they sleep upside down and let gravity do the work when they drop-glide into flight for the  night shift.

Sloths make like Red Riding Hood's wolf, "the better to eat you, my dear," as they hang by their curved claws, conserving energy, while they snack on low-calorie leaves. Three diverse animals use the upside down position to feign death: the pale green beetle and o'possum do the flop, legs stiff in the air, to appear unappetizingly dead. But the hog-nosed snake tops all of them with an act any Academy Award winner could envy: he inverts with his pale underbelly up, secretes a smelly liquid that makes him reek like road kill, and even adds a persuasive trickle of blood from his mouth.

And the male bird of paradise turns himself into a feathery Valentine to woo a lady, flipping and displaying his bright underside to wow and woo his sweetheart.

Robin Page's and Steve Jenkins' forthcoming Animals Upside Down: A Pull, Pop, Lift & Learn Book! (Houghton Mifflin, 2013) is replete with gorgeous animal drawings from illustrator Jenkins and highly readable text by author Page. But in a departure from their many award-winning nature study books, this one ventures into the interactive book genre, quaintly called "Toy and Movable Books." With surprising special effects in the form of pop-ups, flaps, pull-tabs, and wheels to make amazing things happen on the page:  a swimming mallard paddles across the water until a tab-pull flips a flap and shows him bottom up; a pop-up fruit bat explodes from its perch, upside down, its wings spread wide; a threatened skunk does a handstand, raises his tail, and lets fire with his memorable stinky spray stuff and pangolins, woolly monkeys, and green monkey skinks use their prehensile tails to swing through the treetops.

Adding the hands-on feature to Jenkins' notable illustrations make this book a surefire child pleaser and with ultra sturdy moving parts and an appendix of picture index of featured creatures to prod further reading, Animals Upside Down: A Pull, Pop, Lift & Learn Book! is a rising star in interactive nonfiction for the primary grades.

Happily Page and Jenkins end their book by taking the focus right back to reader, with a child flipping to do an upside downer in a full handstand.

Turning upside down helps animals in lots of different ways....
But sometimes going topsy-turvy is just for fun!

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.)