Insects are my life - Softcover

Megan McDonald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0439313287 ISBN 13: 9780439313285

Publisher: Scholastic, 2001

Synopsis

No one at home or school understands Amanda Frankenstein's devotion to insects until she meets Maggie.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Pigtailed and bespectacled-and with a freckled, round face and turned-up nose-Amanda Frankenstein looks like a junior pedant. And perhaps she is. Crazy about insects, the strong-willed girl dumps her brother's fireflies out of the jar and informs him, "Bugs are people, too, you know." Amanda amasses a huge collection of bugs ("Dead ones, of course"), is proud of the number of mosquito bites on her leg (22) and utters the dramatic claim stated in the book's title. Incessantly talking about (and even acting like) various insects, she antagonizes her brother and classmates. The plot wears thin, although some of Amanda's antics are engaging and many of McDonald's (Is This a House for Hermit Crab?) lines are quite funny (when the aspiring entomologist puts her feet on the kitchen table because, she announces, butterflies have taste buds in their feet, her mother orders her to "please keep your taste buds on the floor"). Johnson's (The Cow Who Wouldn't Come Down) animated watercolor, colored-pencil and pastel illustrations depend on exaggeration for their humor; even so, they are truer to life than the text in their depiction of ordinary feelings. Ages 4-7.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Kindergarten-Grade 3?Amanda loves bugs, a fact that no one else seems to appreciate. She examines them, collects them, protects them, and imitates their behavior. She even gets into trouble at home and at school because of them. Kids tease her, and one in particular, Victor, makes her life miserable. In one humorous exchange she calls him "... a stinkbug on the leaf of life." Then she discovers Maggie, a classmate who has a passion of her own?reptiles. Factual tidbits slipped surrepetitiously into the appealing text add information to this spirited tale. It's refreshing to have nonsqueamish female characters who are willing to take on all adversaries in defense of their causes. Full-page and vignette illustrations rendered in soft-hued watercolors, colored pencils, and pastels complement and add humor to the story. They are energetic, engaging, and entomologically correct. Insects Are My Life is an almost-perfect specimen.?Virginia Opocensky, formerly at Lincoln City Libraries, NE
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scholastic
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0439313287
• ISBN 13: 9780439313285
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 28