Insects Books

This is a colorful, beautifully illustrated, great rhyming book that teaches counting. My babies LOVE this book. I LOVE this book. My sons are squealing from delight when I open it. If they are distracted and I start reading it, they forget about everything else. One of our favorites and definitely a winner!

I got the book when my daughter was 3 months old because I love its beautiful colors, the illustrations and the rhyming little poem. I read to her and showed her the pictures when she was laying in bed. As soon as she could sit up she was grabbing it and investigated the book closely. Then she started cooing to the little bugs/bees in the book. Now she is 10 months old the book can still hold her attention for a good 20-15 min. She will just flip through it like a big girl and saying a lot of things to it. Just a sweet sight. The best book in our collection by far.

I bought this book for my daughter when she was 2 or 3 and she loved it. She brought it to daycare with her and it became a hit there as well. Then my son came along and he loved it sooo much that it finally fell apart and I just bought a second copy. It is very simple, but colorful, and helpful with counting skills. A good classic to have ready at bedtime and guaranteed to be a hit as a gift for a 2-5 year old.

This book is so sweet! To a young child, it "teaches" numbers, colors, counting and the visuals(ladybugs to touch). To the one who reads this book to a young child, do you remember when you were read to when you were a child? How the voice of the person telling you the story lulled you to sleep or got you jazzed about something due to the story line? For the young child, this is a great book and reminded me of my childhood when my dad and I would sit and read together.

We have read to our daughter every day since we brought her home from the hospital. Even at only three months old, she loves this book. The colors are very eye catching and she likes to feel the little lady bugs. We prop it up for her and turn the pages while she does tummy time. Another favorite, "Good Night, Sweet Butterflies" by the same author. Be sure to get both, for tactile stimulation as well as visual.

I bought "Diary of a Spider" thinking that Doreen Cronin's books are always a big hit with my daughter. After all, she just loves, "Click, Clack, Moo!" and the others of that series. I thought getting this series could introduce her to the world of insects and "icky" things.

Instead, I found something unexpected happened. My daughter was 5 when I first started reading "The Diary of a spider" to her, and sure enough, she loved this book became interested in the life of spiders. But that was not all. My daughter also began to express an interest in keeping her own sort of diary, even though she cannot yet write. She asked me to buy her a little journal, and she glued pictures and stickers from school and her Kindergarten class in it. She added some photos of our family; had me write the names of the people under the pictures for her. I do not think she would have come by starting this sort of scrapbooking or diary-making without having read "Diary of a Spider" and seeing the value of this activity. "Diary of a Spider" really helped her to see that every body's point of view is unique and special.

I am really delighted in this result and highly recommend this book for its value not only in garnering interest in entomology, but also for developing positive self-worth and interest in Diary making.

My grandchildren (2 & 3) both liked the book. My grandson loves spiders and he was excited about it. The illustrations were great.

My kids love these books, and love to have them read to them often. I even enjoy hearing them read to me. I would recommend any of the "Diary of a" books.

We all love the Diary of a Worm, Spider and Fly books. Great illustrations, educational and funny!

In the same funny vein as Diary of a Worm, Diary of a Spider is chuckle-inducing fun for kids and adults who are kids at heart. Not much of a story line, per se, the book is just a peek into the "every day life" of a spunky little girl spider - a composition of humorous vignettes. The art is perfectly suited to this style of humor.

This style of the book reminds me of Edward Gorey. The illustrations are fabulous, if the matter is a bit dark. I have bought this for numerous friends after finding it at a unique bookstore in Portland, OR. Everyone who reads it ends up loving it.

wonderful story with a twist at the end. Wonderful illustrations. Don't in an old spooky way.

This book is amazing. We LOVE it! I love reading it to my daughter, because its a very easy read with a great cadence, and its fun to pour over the illustration to find something new every time. Tony DiTerlizzi is an awesome illustrator, and I am looking forward to seeing more stories illustrated by him.

This item was exactly as described in the item description. It was in the original packaging and is in excellent condition. I am very satisfied and I highly recommend this seller and product to everyone. This is an excellent book by an excellent author!

This book has amazing illustrations. Children love the macabre tale of the spider and the fly. I read this every year to my kindergarten class and it always gets rave reviews from the kids.

This cleverly written concept (counting and poetry) book combined with the most beautiful illustrations makes this a must have for any home library. Before they can even read, children will enjoy have this story read to them while they look at the vivid pictures and try to count all the bugs to match the story. Opportunities to increase vocabulary are bountiful with the creative and broad use of vocabulary within the rhyming plot. The ending shows a great character building lesson to get to know someone before making a judgement. Just perfect!

Very cute story. I bought my niece the Fisher-Price tea party set and bought this book to go with it. The story is short but the pictures are adorable and very colorful. I would recommend this book. My niece is 1 1/2, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone over 3.

We've been reading this to our little guy since he was three months old, if even that, and he was glued to it from the start, easily his favorite book, still, at nearly 13 months. Great color, great rhythm, and lots of fun bugs! :)

The "Miss Spider" books are pretty easy reads. Nice stories, wonderfully bright, and imaginatively styled illustrations!

My 3 year old is a little concerned with spiders in general and I think by giving a sweet personality to a spider, it helps to take the edge off of the spiders we may find in the house and in nature.

The artwork in this book will keep any child interested. It took my daughter a few reads to get into the story and she still prefers Miss Spider's New Car, but we read this book often.

This was a favorite of mine as a child, so I was excited when my daughter was the right age to read it. She enjoys it immensely and loves to point out and name all the details in the colorful pictures.

I love how the paperback version offers a gerat book at an affordable rate for my boys. I remember watching it on "Reading Rainbow" as a child and was happy to share it with my own boys.

This is a wonderful rhyming book fun to read and kids love it. This is the second one I have given away.

I read this book when I was a child and LOVED it. I remember the thrill of seeing that HUGE loaf of bread and the jam. Sent my imagination soaring. Then there was the satisfying end to the bees (I was terrified of bees as a child so you can imagine how thrilled I was at the end. =D) I think it was my most favorite childhood book.

I found this book in the library some years ago and shared it with my son (now 12). I've just bought it to share with my younger son...and my older one is THRILLED. =D We both can't wait for it to arrive.

This was my favorite book when I was a kid, and now my son asks for "Sandwich" as well. I started reading it to him when he was 6 weeks old. We had to take a break to board books when he was in his eat books and turn their pages roughly phase, but now he appreciates having this book read to him. I and my parents, and one day my kids, all know the words by heart. You won't get sick of reading it either. Since I have the words memorized, I can look at the pictures, and even after reading it so many times, I keep finding new details in the pictures!

I never knew there were so many different kinds of caterpillars. The book has wonder color pictures and great information on each species. One of my favorite moths is the hummingbird moth. I now know that its lava is a horn caterpillar, the kind I would automatically kill when found. Not any more!!
This book will be on my porch for quick reference every time I go into the garden.It is really great.

Caterpillars of Eastern North America is easily the best book on the subject in general publication today. It is an amazing book with incredible insights into the habits and lifecycle of this neglected stage in Lepidoptera metamorphosis. You will not be disappointed if you buy this fascinating guide.

A great book on ID of caterpillers!! I was able to find the IO Moth caterpiller with this book in hand. Very in depth info pack in this book. I would highly recommend this book, especially if one finds caterpillers they've never seen before, which was my case. Check out my photos!

Super. Beautiful photos and very detailed, and the photo of the adult is also very helpful. My only complaint would be trying to locate a specific caterpiller, some sort of indexing based upon size, color, spines, hairs, etc would be helpful (I'm thinking something along the lines of what is done in "Weeds of the Northeast" (Comstock Books)). Overall an exceptional book.

I've waited a long time for a book like this! The photos and descriptions have great detail. Identification is easy enough to be used by a young person and scientific enough to satisfy a professor.
Guides to butterflies and moths seldom contain pictures of the caterpillars of the adult stage insect. This book has pictures of both.
I think having a book like this (are there any others?) is essential for someone who spends time in the garden, or any natural environment.
Now I can know what is living in my garden and eating my plants before I decide to squash or not to squash it.

My 27 month old son and I really enjoy Julia Donaldson's books and this book is among our favorites. It was the first of her books that we read and we liked it so much that we thought to purchase her other books without looking at other reviews and we have not been disappointed. She is a great children's book author and knows how to keep her stories interesting and just the right length for their attention span(I started this book with my son when he was under two and instead of reading the printed text which would be too long for a two year old, I described each page since the illustrations tell the story themselves-I was able to keep his interest by adding a little bit of detail each time we read it.) The illustrations are wonderful and I feel like my son got exposed to the great vastness of this world by simply going on an adventure with the snail and the whale:-)

The story of a snail that wants to see the world and the whale that gives her a ride. Very nice story and the rhymes and the cadence make it fun to read out loud.

Again wonderful illustrations and a great story. Easy to paraphrase for a younger child and then to be reading exactly as written for the three year old.

My youngest grandson loved this book. Very well written with exciting parts for young children and a good story line. 5 star rating well deserved.

We have several books by Julia Donaldson. Mostly they have been translated into Hebrew as we live in Israel and my kids are bilingual. But The Snail and the Whale is one of the few we have in English....and I'm so happy that we do! I love this story. I've read it to my kids so many times, I think I could recite it verbatim from start to finish - yet we never tire of it. Ms Donaldson has such a magical way with words that truly engages the kids and yet there's always a message in her books without ever sounding even remotely preachy. And true to form, the tiny snail in this story teaches us a great big lesson about bravery, self-worth and friendship.

Let me put in my two cents' worth, as well. This is a fabulous book even for those who aren't into bugs. Eisner is a warm and wonderful writer who's enthusiasm for insects is infectious. It inspired me to a) raise some cockroaches to study their behavior (and thereby risk divorce), and b) search for spiders by flashlight (and thereby risk neighborly opprobrium).
Buy the book, kick up, relax, and enter the surprisingly fascinating world of insects and chemistry.

This is an excellent book to share the insect world as they protect themselves from their environments.

I purchased the book as a Christmas Gift for an 11 yr old very bright nephew who is fascinated with insects. After reading other reviews it seemed as though the book was written a little more with younger reader in mind. Either I misinterpreted the reviews or overestimated the nephew's interest.
He opened it, thumbed through it, was unimpressed, read a little here and there and was further unimpressed, walked away and actually left the book at my house. Had I not inscribed the inside front cover, I would have returned it. One of these days maybe I will read it and post a review from a different prospective. Also, one of these days, I will learn that children, bright or not, prefer toys for Christmas - not books. *sigh*
A. Michaels

Easily readable! If you ever had an interest in bugs, it will be rekindled here. Superlative, you might as well buy two because you will be giving one away to a friend.

Thomas Eisner is J. G. Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell University and his life long fascination of the insect world has blessed us with an extraordinary, in-depth knowledge of bugs and their awesome capabilities, esp., in chemical defenses which have led to the discovery of many helpful medicines, etc.

Eisner's many beautiful color photos and micro-photography turn this book into a coffee-table txt book on insect ecology and this is worth the price of admission on just that aspect alone.

The famous sociobiologist/entomologist, friend and research collaborator of Eisner, E. O. Wilson, "Diversity of Life", et al., wrote the Foreword to this book and gives a good summation on the focus of this book: "The many behaviors he [Eisner] has discovered and explained, and their implementation by life around us, amazing in a variety and precision, are the worthy focus of this book." Well put.

After the Foreword is a great quote about insects in general: "What makes things baffling is their degree of complexity, not their sheer size... a star is simpler than an insect." From: [Martin Rees, "Exploring Our Universe and Others," Scientific American, December 1999]

In the Prologue, Eisner has given a great appraisal of the insect world in: "They have succeeded in one major respect where humans have failed. They are practitioners of sustainable development. Although they are the primary consumers of plants, they do not merely exploit plants. They also pollinate them, thereby providing a secure future, both for themselves and for their plant partners." Indeed, symbiosis, harmony...

...And, Eisner on his hopes for this fine book: "If this book contributes in any way toward bolstering the preservationist spirit, as I hope it might, it will have fulfilled it's purpose."

It has certainly "edified" my preservationist spirit and will no doubt do the same for others!

For the organic gardener, this is a must have for your reference library. Very informative and comprehensive.

The health aspects of organic gardnening cannot be overstated. The petroleum-based fertilizers and toxic pesticides, genetic alterations, etc. of current farming techniques are causing many health problems and will increasingly do so. This book, and other books like it, reveal truly healthy and environmentally safe techniques to grow untainted food that is truly nutitious. Your local supermarket does not sell food, it sells commerical products. Food depleted of its nutrients cannot be "enriched"; what was healthy is now "dead" food. Much in the same way most of us have been duped into buying "health plans". Such should be more appropriately called "sickness plans". Health plans do nothing to keep you healthy. Not one penny of your payment goes to increasing your health and boosting your immune system. But rather you pay them to expose you to what can be deadly immunizations and in fact they are much more harmful than beneficial. Germs are not your enemy. The suppression of your immune system is. It is what you do to your own body and immune system. What you willing (and sometimes unwillingly) expose yourself to is what makes a person sick. Your body is completely capable of healing itself when you provide it with the proper nutients found in natural herbs, fruits, and vegetables grown free of man-made chemicals and toxins. The answers are out there but the medical establishment wants to keep them from you. It makes big pharma billions every year. For example if most of you knew that there are at least 10 (ten) cures for cancer what would we do with all those who overnight would become unemployed? Yes, there are commercial entities that want control over your life in every way, whether you realize it or not. Take control of your life or let the government be your guardian. Which one of these options is best for you?

this book was well organized in its presentation of problems for each type of plant covered. set in A-Z format of common plant names (though Latin names are used as well), the editors (Barbara Ellis, and Fern Bradley)give several ways to combat garden issues from an organic methodology. most of the ways of working with organics that they outline are not high cost, but are high maintainence as is all organic gardening, if done right.

the book also covers some common insects a gardener would see and if they are beneficial or not and how to work with the beneficials (what to plant to attract, etc) and to control the "bad bugs". they also outline some diseases and how to fight those with organic methods. then they touch on other ways to fight garden pests (cultural, physical, and biological contols). they also talk about different organic dusts and sprays and how to use them effectively.

If you want to garden organically and can only afford to buy one book on insect and disease control -- this is it! I go for this book first whenever I think I have problems in the garden, in the landscape, in the orchard. It's an all around great reference book!

Excellent Book with lots of informative teaching! Money well spent. Fast and professional delivery! Much appreciated!

I loved this book. After reading it I spent the next night telling my wife all I'd managed to remember.

Journey to the Ants is a shorter version of the authors' monumental The Ants (1990), a 732-page tome aimed at professional biologists with a lot of technical language and a clear encyclopedic intent. This book, as Holldobler and Wilson explain in the Preface, is of "a more manageable length, with less technical language and with an admitted and unavoidable bias toward those topics and species on which we have personally worked."

It is a terrific book, lavishly illustrated with many color plates, line drawings, black and white drawings, photos, etc. Especially wonderful are the color prints of paintings by John D. Dawson showing ants in various activities. His style reminds me a bit of M.C. Esher. Also notable are the many photos taken by Holldobler and Wilson during their many travels and studies. They are both renowned experts on ants around the world.

The text is both informative and entertaining. Wilson in particular is a world class science writer as well as a great scientist, and his clarity of expression and enthusiasm show through. The chapters examine and illustrate how ants live in their colonies, how they hunt prey, tend aphid "cattle," cultivate fungi, raid other ant colonies; how they fight and how they reproduce. Other chapters focus on particular species, like army ants or leaf cutter ants, or "strange" ants. Still other chapters show how ants communicate especially through pheromones and touch. There is some theory on ant origins (about 100-120 million years ago) and their evolution and present distribution. I was particularly interested in and appalled by both the way some ants are parasites and how they themselves are exploited by parasites. Our esteemed authors show how ants, for all their power and evolutionary success, can be the most naive victims of beetles, flies, butterfly larva, etc. simply because they can be fooled by smells that mimic those of the colony and/or because they can be given irresistible concoctions of food or what might be called "drugs" that make them passive and acceptive of insects that will eat their eggs and larva. They are also tricked into feeding strangers on the trail and alien larva in the colony nest!

I purposely first read a couple of other books on ants (The World of Ants: A Science-Fiction Universe (1970) by Remy Chauvin, and Ants (1977) by M.V. Brian), written by myrmecologists of an earlier generation so as to be able to better appreciate this famous work. But you need not do that. Journey to the Ants is eminently accessible to just about any literate person.

While reading I had some thoughts (as Wilson famously has had) on the differences and similarities between ant societies and human ones. Ants are not governed as we are (and as was once thought) in any way by a central authority. (They are influenced by the queen's pheromones and her behavior.) Instead ants are examples of "swarm intelligence," that is purposeful and coordinated behavior that arises from each individual doing what comes naturally to that individual. This sort of intelligence was just beginning to be appreciated when Holldobler and Wilson wrote this book. The phrase "swarm intelligence" does not appear anywhere in the book, and yet it is clear that our present understanding of how this intelligence works was gleaned in part from the work of biologists and ethologists like Holldobler and Wilson.

Ants are famous for doing human-like things that no other animals or few can do, such as gardening, tending herds, making war, and constructing elaborate living spaces. It is usually said that ants do it from pure instinct whereas we use our intelligence and the experience. Humans and ants cannot be defined independently of their respective cultures. What I wonder is, is it an artificiality to say that their intelligence, spread out as it is among the individuals and their genetic endowments, is fundamentally different from our own? Clearly ants are limited in what they can construct, what they can understand, and what tools they can make and use. I read somewhere that ants never developed fire because no ant could get close enough to a sustainable fire to tend it.

A striking conclusion is that perhaps the real difference between us comes from our ability to grow a million times bigger in size which allows us not only to tend fires, but to develop brains large enough to handle abstract thought such as in language, which further allows us to develop and share ideas, concepts, practices, and all the other aspects of our culture in a way that is impossible for ants, whose brain size is limited by their anatomy.

So, although ants were here long before we arrived, and although they probably will be here long after we are gone, it is impossible to say which life form is the more successful. We do have at present the capability, which ants do not, of enhancing our ability to survive through genetic engineering and the development of biologically friendly machines, and even the ability to migrate away from this earth so that our genes and ourselves are not in one basket, so to speak. Should a planet-sterilizing event hit the earth, we could be on Mars and still survive.

But then there is this insidious thought: perhaps the ants, like our resident microbes, will find a way to come with us!

Don't miss this book. You are in for a treat.

There is few to say that has not been said. It is very well written and the information is mind-boggling.

As many have said in the reviews and hard to top, this is a book that the whole family can enjoy as it includes instructions at the end on starting an Ant farm. I would however advise just one point for the kids and that is if the smaller kids are reading it by themselves and that is just tell them to skip over the big technical words and they will get just as much a kick out of it as I did. They can learn the technical words as they progress. But WOW ! , what a great book and the vast implications to so many areas from human society to our entire planet as a whole.

I was mostly interested in myrmecology to learn more about network systems and their benefits and implications, but got way more. The more I read of Edward O. Wilson, the more eager and the more desire I have to read further. My only regret is that it took this long to come across both his and others work.

Of note and besides the many enlightening aspects in the book, my favorite insigt is in the first few pages, as paraphrased, "It would appear that socialism really works under some circumstances; Karl Marx just had the wrong species." If that quote interests you, then the rest of the book will too.

This book is very informative and extremely entertaining, offering a review of the history and landmark findings of myrmecology by two of the field's greatest minds. While it is not nearly as exhaustive as the authors' great tome The Ants, Journey to the Ants carries a momentum that The Ants at times can lack due to its nature as a technical monograph. Part gripping narrative and part academic text, it offers something for anyone with a healthy interest in biology.