Insects Books

I ordered several copies of this book for my grandchildren and other little ones and mailed them to each one for Christmas along with handmde "worm" scarves and puppet mittens. Everyone was thrilled with their gifts.
I recommed this book.

I just finished teaching and read this book on my last day. We talked about how Bob and Otto could be friends even though they're in different places. This poignant piece is appropriate for young children with its repetition and text alignment. It's interesting even for adults with its incredibly deep concept of friendship. I have a lot of books I love...but this is hands down my favorite.

I love this little book for so many reasons. The story is simple, and the illustrations are lovely. The writing helps cement reading concepts for my five year old, and he loves to "read" it to me. I have a background in science, and one of my favorite things is that, anthropomorphic characters aside, this book is accurate. Simple natural history lessons are imbedded in story. And I don't mind reading it over and over again. Now that's an achievment!

My 5yo loves this book! She has memorized it and "reads" it over and over out loud to us. It is a sweet story and has beautiful pictures. Just adorable! We had gotten this from the library but I'm buying a copy because it is definitely a keeper!

I just love all the Nick Bruel books, and this one is no exception. It's for younger kids - I'd say 2 - 4yr olds, whereas "Who is Melvin Bubble" (the last Nick Bruel release) is for the older set. The story, written by Nick Bruel's father, is simple and sweet without being at all cloying, and as usual the illustrations are lovely. And bonus - my 3 1/2 year old is no longer afraid of worms! (Otto is the sensitive, industrious worm)

Butterfly House is a story about a girl, her grandpa, and a butterfly. The girl saves a larva from a jay and puts it in a jar, and then a box. When the butterfly hatches, she has to let it go. But when she grows older, every spring the painted ladies come to visit her.
This book would be good for read-alouds at school, because it's a good story and kids can learn about nature and kindness. It would be especially good for kids who like butterflies. But it might not be good for kids over eight years old. Also, some kids might not find the characters exciting.

I was very happy with this book. I loved it and so did my class. I plan to use it for many years to come.

What a beautiful story. A little girl finds and saves a tiny "worm" from a hungry Jay. She takes the caterpillar to her grandfather, who then helps her build a butterfly box. They decorate it together, and eventually, when the butterfly breaks out of its cocoon and becomes a beautiful butterfly, they let it go back into the wild, their garden.

This is rather a simple story at first glance. The art work by Greg Shed can only be described as "delicious." Soft colors, well blended and mellow, along with very accurate details of flowers and wildlife, make this book a treasure to view. Like so many children's books, the pictures can be enjoyed, even without reading the words.

Now as to the text is this particular book. I found it absolutely delightful. More prose that anything else, it not only precisely informs as to how to raise a butterfly, but it very well illustrates the love between the grandfather and granddaughter. Now I am not as sophisticated as those folks who write for Publisher's Weekly, who's almost incoherent review seemed to feel the syntax was a bit "treacly." I found nothing overly sweet or cloying what-so-ever. I do hope I never become so sophisticated either. How boring! I suppose that lines such as "How strange to think my grandpa once was young like me. " We would have been best friends if I'd been there back then," I said. My grandpa smiled. "It worked out anyhow, we're best friends now," was a bit over the top for them.

Anyway, when the little girl grows up, she lives in the same house her grandpa did. Her garden is just as beautiful and is filled with butterflies each year. She, an old woman now, feels the butterflies have told generation after generation of other butterflies how she saved one of their own, years ago, ergo, that is why the older lady now has more butterflies in her garden than anyone else in the area.

The book concludes with detailed instructions on how to raise butterflies, how to build a butterfly house and what to do after they have "hatched."

I liked this work. The kids I read it to liked it and I do highly recommend it.
Butterfly House
D. Blankenship

I saw a copy of BUTTERFLY HOUSE and bought it right away because I was attracted to the love and warmth that the book radiates through its story and illustrations on one of my favorite subjects, the butterfly. Butterfly lovers can look for MALINDA MARTHA MEETS MARIPOSA too, different in that it features the Monarch rather than the Painted Lady and different again in that it offers the dimension of acting out the life-cycle as a play. Similar is the love for the butterfly that the children will experience in each book. One doesn't seem complete without the other. Together a child will build a life-time of love and knowledge on this subject.

This book is about a girl who saves a caterpillar
from a hungry blue jay. The girl keeps the caterpilar until it is a butterfly. My favorite part is when they make the caterpillar's little house. I LOVE the illustrations.I'd recommend this book to people who like butterflies.

This is a beautifully written and illustrated children's book. It shows the world through the eye's of a child, with all their questions and interests about nature. It's a great book to read to children, and stimulates many intersting discussions from them regarding different facts about butterflies and nature. I highly recommend this book to children of all ages!

A Butterfly's Teeth launches young readers on a fanciful journey of imagination. Lovingly and lavishly illustrated, it features delightful rhymes and delivers its tale with wit and charm. Highly recommended for questioning minds of all ages.

A Butterfly's Teeth is written in rhyming verse. The beautiful illustrations along with the verses keep childern's as well as adult's interrest throughout the story.

A walk with a child's imagination. Innovative and insightful. The illustrations are brilliant. Illustrations and story work beautifully together. This is a must book for every beginning reader.

Very imaginative and original. Fantastic illustrations. This is a must book for beginning readers.

This is an engrossing book which actually has some good tips on how to rid your house of cockroaches. I'm planning to find some Siege or Maxforce, or at the very least dip stale white bread in old beer and put the "bait" into a jar with Vaseline spread in a line along the top inside. A few of the cockroach experts (warriors?) the author interviews are just as fascinating as their subjects. Something else in the book: a miniature flipbook of cockroaches mating (not as interesting as his written description, though).

I read this book while spending the summer in a run-down, cockroach-infested, seasonal fishing cabin in Canada. It was hilarous, informative, very, very well-written and almost (almost) made me like the nasty little things. I always read while eating lunch, but really, don't do that with this book! I highly recommend this to anybody who has an interest in nature, an interest in insects, a curious mind, or...a population of cockroaches in his house! (No, really; there was enough info in this book to help me understand The Enemy and largely eradicate them. I am now in the market for similar books on bats, mice, ants, and bears... .)

OK, I admit I used to be among the majority who reacted in revulsion to these creatures and whose first instinct was to squash it--quickly!

Reading Schweid's fascinating book changed all that. The highly adaptable cockroach will probably outlive humans. They're perfectly designed scavengers and extremely good at proliferating their species.

The book combines a mixture of fact, anecdotes and fictional excerpts that explore the nature & habits of the cockroach as well as its uneasy relationship with humanity.

One of a selective number of books I actually had to buy. And, as a footnote, on a recent trip to D.C., I went to the Smithsonian and held a giant Madgascar hissing cockroach. And I like it!

_The Cockroach Papers_ by Richard Schweid is a book one might not normally think of as enjoyable, one that that focuses on the biology and human history of the cockroach. I however found it very entertaining, even funny at times, and also extremely informative and boasting a wealth of illustrations. The author had an engaging writing style, weaving in stories of his personal life (some only marginally related to cockroaches, though all were quite engrossing).

There are a great variety of roach species in the world, though not all of them are pests. The most famous of course are the pest species, including the most common domestic cockroach in the U.S, the German cockroach, (_Blattella germanica_), and the second most common, the American cockroach (_Periplaneta americana_), both the main subjects of the book. Other pest species in North America include the oriental cockroach, brown-banded roach (noted for colonizing appliances), and the smokey-brown, though there are 64 other species on the continent far from the haunts of man. More than 5,000 species of cockroach are known in the order Blattaria (from the Greek word blattae, for roach). Only about a hundred species worldwide occur around humans at all; most live unseen, generally in hot humid jungles though they are found virtually everywhere on Earth.

Schweid went into a great deal of detail exploring roach anatomy, physiology, pheromones (including not only mating pheromones but interestingly aggregation and dispersal pheromones), daily habits, and mating behavior, much of it fascinating reading. One learns the early warning system for roaches is not their antennae; it is a pair of feelers called the cerci, located on the backside near the anus, covered in hundreds of remarkably fine and sensitive hairs, each only 0.5 millimeters long and 0.005 millimeters wide (this is what lets them scurry away so fast when the lights come on!).

Roaches have had a long history with humanity, traveling with humans to every spot on the globe. They were particularly fond of traveling by ship, and historical records have shown people such as the Sir Francis Drake, Captain Bligh, and others having contended with them. Interesting, the word cockroach itself is a relative newcomer; while they have long been known to humanity (the Romans for instance called them lucifuga, for their habit of avoiding light), the word did not appear until Europeans began traveling the world. "Cockroach" as a term first appeared in the 1500s to describe not long familiar pests but new ones noticed from sojourns in Africa and elsewhere (the first written use in the English language came from Captain John Smith of Pocahontas fame in 1624). The two most famous in the U.S. are not natives; the German cockroach is thought native to north Africa, spread by the Phoenicians to Europe and then from there throughout Russia and eventually the Americas, while the American cockroach (sometimes euphemistically called the "water bug") is thought to have come directly from Africa on slave ships.

Along the way Schweid chronicled the numerous ways the cockroach has entered various cultures, ranging from their role as the "Trickster" in Caribbean folktales to the famous song "La Cucaracha" (originating with Pancho Villa's soldiers, about a roach missing its two back legs, a song with many versions), to the writings of Franz Kafka, to the 1997 movie _Mimic_.

The association with roaches has not been a wanted one, as they have been known to be vectors of many diseases, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and even hookworms and tapeworms. They have been known to be more direct threats; people have gone to emergency rooms when roaches became lodged in their ear, and roaches have been known to partially consume human fingernails, toenails, and skin. Also, they sometimes feed on human corpses, causing such damage at times that forensics experts have mistaken damage caused by roaches as wounds sustained by the deceased while alive.

The war against cockroaches has gone on for millennia. Over the centuries there have been numerous ways used to combat them. An Egyptian papyrus was found with a prayer to the ram-headed god Khnum for protection from roaches, and the Greek scholar Diophanes recommended ways to rid homes of roach infestations. Sailors were once given rewards, either bottles of brandy or shore leave, for turning in specified numbers of roach bodies and sometimes kept on board monkeys or lemurs to hunt and eat roaches.

Today fighting roaches is big business; there are estimates that as much as $240 million a year is spent in the U.S. on control of roaches, with the city of New York alone spending half a million dollars a year on insecticides. Schweid chronicled much of the research into controlling them and the debates over whether to use sprays or baits. The war has taken a special significance as studies have shown a very strong linkage between asthma and allergies to cockroaches. As asthma appears to be on the rise - a 60% increase in the last decade, particularly among poor African-American males - this is very important.

Roaches are of course famous survivors and Schweid provided numerous examples of this. The American cockroach for instance can survive 90 days without food, and 40 days without food or water. They eat a tremendous variety of items, with the pest species known to consume glue, hair, paper, leather, banana skins, and feces. There are 14 breaking points on the legs, cerci, and antennae of the German cockroach, which, if grabbed by a predator, they can pull away and leave the enemy with just an appendage, one replaced at the next molt.

As much a pest as some species of roach have been, they have actually served mankind. The American cockroach has long been a favorite laboratory animal thanks to its substantial size, abundance, ease of care, and exemption from any laws governing the use of lab animals. Work on roaches gave birth to the field of neuroendocrinology and was important in early studies of circadian rhythms.

There are fascinating random factoids on nearly every page. My coworkers and most friends don't care to hear all my new knowledge, unfortunately. Not exactly cocktail party chitchat. But extremely interesting to learn about. Mating habits, nervous systems, favorite foods, pheromones,molting, it's all here!

Great little set of three very cute and classic books. The books are high quality boardbooks that instantly became favorites with my 22 month old daughter. Great value and price on Amazon too.

I recommend ALL of Eric Carle's books. They are great! I especially love to hear kids read them!

My little guy loves these books. He chews, drools and yanks on the pages and the books are unaffected.

Here's what the description missed...
Very Little Library: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Very Lonely Firefly, The Very Busy Spider

I am very interested in buying this set of books but I do not see anywhere where it says which books are included in this set? Am I just missing it? What books are included??

This is a good set. My kids (under 5) already loved the Very Hungry Catepillar and now they won't stop having us read the other two. Each one is unique. The Catepillar book shows everything a caterpillar has eaten, the Spider book lets you feel the fuzzy spider webs, and the firefly book lights up at night. Great fun.

When I ordered this book I expected a typical book describing insects and how to match the hatch. This book does this but in a unique way. It uses short chapters to explain a particular subject or problem and how it is solved. I am an entomologist and this little book contained some new insights into aquatic insect behavior and how to catch fish.The author is very observant and works hard to solve fishing challenges.

Ralph Cutter has spent literally thousands of hours studying trout underwater. His observations are totally unique from other fly fishing writers. Informative and fun read.

A great read. This book is a great resource for fishing certain bugs. You can read a short chapter in a short amount of time. Ralph Cutter writes so one can understand his techniques, yet doesn't compromise the technical aspects. Like the "Go To Fly", this is my new "Go To Book" for learning how to fish certain bugs.

Can't say enough about Cutters new book. I have read a lot of books on fly fishing looking for one that cuts through the mumbo jumbo and this book does just that. It simplifies the whole process of fly selection and whats going on out there on the river. I have since mastered tying the Birds Nest and have eliminated so many other patterns. This book is a must read over and over book for anyone who loves fly fishing.

I'm a neophyte fly fisherman and daunted (albeit fascinated) by aquatic entomology. Cutter's book is fantastic. He covers the bases in a humorous fashion, with a perspective not present in other books I've read. He challanges alot of orthodox ideas and puts you in a trouts-eye-view that leaves you looking at a familiar stream a bit differently. A really enjoyable read. In fact, I was officially deemed a 'dork' when my wife caught me laughing out-loud while reading a book about bugs...

I got this book from a friend and my little girl loves it. She was able to play with it as young as 2 months and now that she's 5 months old, she still loves it. The crinkling noise of the pages is what delights her the most. Does anyone out there know of any other books that make the crinkling sound? I would love to buy more.

we had loads of toys and this was the first toy my baby started holding and reaching for..Recommend. about where to purchase, try babycenter.com for ten dollars.

Great toy, very cool book. Our 2.5 months old just loves to look at the Ladybug on the cover. She like to feal the book and to listen to the pages that make different sounds. Later we will be able to read it. There is no picture of the book on the site, but it's a very cool-looking book!!!

My nine-month-old daughter adores this book. When she was a few months old, she liked to be read the story. Now that she's older and more active, it is an excellent toy. She likes to hug the book so it makes a crinkle sound. She enjoys playing with the dangling "feet" of the ladybug-shaped book. When she's older, I know she'll tote it around by the handle.

This is a fab book to buy for a baby of any age and would be an excellent gift. Whether baby reads the book or just chews on it, it's a great way to cultivate interest in books.

My son loves this book. We started reading it to him when he was first born and it was the only book that he would watch while we read. Now, at nine months, it is still a favorite. He loves to crunch the crinkle pages, he loves to hold it up an watch the feet dangle, and he loves to chew on the ladybug's antenna.

This book has a wonderful sing songiness to the words which make it fun to read. My 1 year old loves it and so do I.

My son and I love this book. It is beautifuly illustrated to hold my son's attention with a story that is great enough to read over and over....and over again. My only wish was that the action slides were just a little more sturdier. My son is very careful with books and this one is starting to show wear and tear. When it falls apart I will buy a new one. This book is a standard in our library now.

I bought this book years ago because it was on clearance and I was interested in illustrating for children's books. The illustrations are just beautiful. Recently, I had my first child and we have begun reading to him on a regular basis. He is 6 months old and he is captivated by the colors and the cute bug characters. The stories are short enough to keep his attention span. We move some of the pages so it looks like the bugs are moving (flying, digging, climbing, etc.) and he laughs in utter delight. Some pages have leaves protruding out of the page and he actually tries to bite into them! This book has provided the whole family hours of entertainment. We plan on getting more of the books in this series.

My daughter is on her second copy of this, having torn the other one apart out of pure love for the book and the characters. What a great find!

We've been reading this book to my son since he was 4 months old. It's still his favorite at 9 months. We own this book and another one by the same team, "Buzz off I'm Busy." He likes these so much, we're going to buy, "When I'm Big" next. The challenge is keeping his excited fingers from grabbing the cool pop-up pictures. That takes a little bit a work, but it's worth it. Enjoy!

A wonderful book for young children. I recommend for all parents of young children to read to/with them. Also, for the pre-school and kindergarten teacher.

Greatest book on counting I have seen in a while.

This is a really cute book of counting from 1-10. The illustrations are vivid and imaginative and most of all funny! This will tickle the funny-bone of your pre-schooler and make learning fun. When learning is fun, what's learned is rememberred!

Not only is it educational, but it is also brightly colored, we all know kids love to look pictures! While you and your child read this book, your child, without even knowing it, will begin learning numbers and basic mathematical operations! As each ant comes into the story, you will find your child adding them subconciously!

I have twins who love this book and now can read it on their own. The love to lick the lollipop and name the ants after their friends and family members. My two have not enjoyed a book this much since The Monster at the End of this Book.

I have twins who love this book and now can read it on their own. The love to lick the lollipop and name the ants after their friends and family members. My two have not enjoyed a book this much since The Monster at the End of this Book.

If you want to read a boook which is, at once, intelligent, lyrical and scientific, this collection of the writings of J. Henri Fabre should not be missed. He not only walks you through his many thought-provoking studies of the insect world, but also challenges you to consider from whence came the many wonders described therein. Contrary to what other reviewers have said, Fabre's education was not a hindrance to his observations. Indeed, true science (which means, after all "knowledge") is concerned with objective reality, not theoretical flights of fancy. We in the modern world have been lulled into believing that the world is composed of random collections of atoms, that all life is derived - has evolved - from some lower form of life, that all is in flux, and, ultimately, that there is no God. Read Fabre's writings - read them carefully - and dare to think otherwise. He shows, in experiment after experiment, that the insect world is not random and that "Nature acts for an end". More to the point, the results of Fabre's experiments show us that while insects act REASONABLY, they do so without the use of REASON itself (in particular, read chapter six, "The Ignorance of Instinct"). In other words, they act upon the impulse of instinct, which, is itself entirely logical and rational. Such rational ends, it becomes manifestly clear, cannot be the result of a random process of evolution, but must arise from the unseen hand of an intelligent creator. So much for Darwin. But don't believe me - read the book, and then try taking a look at DARWIN ON TRIAL and DARWIN'S BLACK BOX as well (both are excellent books which make the larger case, beyond the insect world, that Darwin was wrong).

Sometime during the 1950s I got this book out of the local library. It took me only a little while to literally devour it! I had been primed by a natural curiosity about insects, the acquisition of the 1952 Yearbook of Agriculture on Insects and the "Golden Guide to Insects" by Herbert Zim. When I read Fabre's writings excerpted in "The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre" I was hooked. Here was no dry account of very obscure facts, but instead a vibrant exposition of the actual lives of insects! And what subjects for study- pine processionary caterpillars, giant peacock moths, sacred scarabs, solitary wasps, mason bees, grasshoppers, cicadas, spittle bugs and on and on. Fabre had his blind spots (he never figured out how scorpions actually mate, disavowed Darwin and often made mistakes in identification.) However he was a great writer and you have to be totally uninterested not to be captivated by his prose.

Soon I was catching, observing and collecting insects. While I had other interests from time to time, these and the related spiders (I became a specialist in the latter) had caught my imagination and my fate was sealed.

This is perhaps the best anthology of excerpts from Fabre's works and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn something of the usually unnoticed activities in every yard, garden, woods or desert.

This book tells the secrets of insect behavior. The author observes very closely the lives of the many species he studied. This is nature at her smartest and her blindest; beauty, horror and science. Highly recommended by me.

Exquisitely written, my imagination was immediately captured by Fabre's patient observations and his poetic retelling of each adventure. Once called an "incomparable observer" by Charles Darwin, Fabre's unsurpassed enthusiasm springs to life on every page. Since reading it a few short years ago I have ever since felt inspired to sit longer in the fields and to spend more time just observing. Admittedly, Fabre was self taught and isolated. He stubbornly disagreed with the theory of evolution. Looking back on his work it is easy to see the mistakes he made, blind spots in his approach to the larger aspects of biological research. Still, if you decide to read this book I'm sure you will be inspired to be with insects. What better thing to do?

In this book Fabre is not only a taxonomist but a behaviorist and he describes insect behavior in a charming and almost poetic way. This book is in no way dry in the way some find books on science to be and as much as it teaches us about insects and other classes of invertebrates it also teaches us about observation. And though I am vehemently opposed to mixing science with mysticism this book would probably be enjoyed by those seeking self improvement and spirituality as much as it would be enjoyed by the scientist.
When I was a child I had an aunt (God bless you Aunt Alberta) who lived on the West coast. She was a Biology teacher. Every once and awhile care packages of books would come from California. One of those books was "The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre". My mother would sometimes read to me from the book when our family when for a drive. I used to hang on every word.
In a way that book changed my life as I am now a scientist.
I think it can change yours as well. In this loud brash world let Fabre guide you into the gentle world of observation.
Highly recommended.