Insects

Reviewed by: Jill O'Connor - North Yarmouth Academy, Yarmouth, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: July 6, 2015

Review

If you're looking for books on a specific topic, a Magic School Bus is not a bad purchase. Be warned though that this title in this series is not a "field trip" story; this book is purely factual, with a different insect on each page. The book does carry on the MSB distinct style of "Frizz Facts" and short essays by Ms. Frizzle's students, but it is not a story. There are pop-up bubbles offering supplemental information about the topic, and the book uses photographs to illustrate each insect mentioned leaving the cartoonish drawings for the characters from the show. Due to all of the side bars and pop-up facts, these books are exhausting read-alouds, better for K-3 research reports. The book covers a broad variety of insects, beetles, butterflies, crickets, bugs, ants, bees, flies, praying mantis, cockroaches, and dragonflies. There is a wealth of information to start a report or to delight an insect-loving reader; young researchers will have to look elsewhere for books with deeper coverage. I appreciated the last pages which discussed the types of careers that often encounter insects. There is a glossary of terms, but no bibliography or "further research" feature. If you have many of the other titles in this series, you should add this, but it's not an essential purchase.

Overall Book Score: good