The Nation's Choice: Theme Paperbacks Challenge Level Theme 2 Grade 6 the Firebug Connection - Softcover

Houghton Mifflin Company

3.47

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9780618062782: The Nation's Choice: Theme Paperbacks Challenge Level Theme 2 Grade 6 the Firebug Connection

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618062785 ISBN 13: 9780618062782

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin School, 2005

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Twelve-year-old Maggie receives European fire bugs for her birthday, but when they fail to metamorphose and grow grossly large and explode instead, she uses scientific reasoning to determine the cause of their strange death.

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About the Author:

Jean Craighead George wrote over one hundred books for children and young adults. Her novel Julie of the Wolves won the Newbery Medal in 1973, and she received a 1960 Newbery Honor for My Side of the Mountain. She continued to write acclaimed picture books that celebrate the natural world. Her other books with Wendell Minor include The Wolves Are Back; Luck; Everglades; Arctic Son; Morning, Noon, and Night; and Galapagos George.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 5-7-- Maggie Mercer has a passion for bugs, a passion she gets to indulge every summer when she accompanies her scientist parents to a mountain research laboratory in Maine. While her mother and father study soil and plants, she collects insects and observes the behavior of a rich assortment of wildlife. When a graduate student from Czechoslovakia gives her a terrarium full of exotic, brightly hued fire bugs for her 12th birthday, Maggie is ecstatic. Unfortunately, the bugs soon begin to die. The larvae, instead of metamorphosing into adults, become grossly large after their fifth molt and explode. Someone, or something, is killing them. Maggie, and 10-year-old Mitch, a pesky computer hacker, investigate the bugs' "murder," using computer databases and scientific reasoning to examine every possibility. These investigations are so intriguing that readers may well be spurred on to further study. The Fire Bug Connection is smoothly written and well characterized. The initial prickly relationship between Maggie and Mitch adds an element of tension that is interesting and believable. Descriptions of Maggie's various experiments in animal behavior as well as general information on a number of ecological problems are skillfully woven into the plot. George's many fans will find this as satisfying as her Who Really Killed Cook Robin? (HarperCollins, 1991). --Karey Wehner, San Francisco Public Library
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