Busy Builders - Hardcover

Munro, Roxie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0761461051 ISBN 13: 9780761461050

Publisher: Two Lions, 2012

Synopsis

Busy Builders was selected for the 2013 Cook Prize honoring the best science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) picture book published for children aged eight to ten.

The tiny creatures in this book are amazing builders. Can you guess which builder makes separate chambers for nurseries and even trash? Or which insect’s home looks like cotton candy? Or what kind of insect has ears on its knees? Busy Builders features eight insects, one spider, and an inside look at the unique structures they each build. Roxie Munro’s striking art, drawn in India ink and colored ink, brings these remarkable feats of engineering into full focus. A glossary and resources to learn more are included. If you were a bug, what kind of home would you build?

The author of Busy Builders has donated this book to the Worldreader program.

About this title

About the Author

Roxie Munro has written and illustrated more than forty books for children, in addition to illustrating books by other authors. Her art has been exhibited nationally, including in the Original Art Exhibit at the Society of Illustrators in New York City. Roxie’s books have received such honors as New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year, Time magazine Best Children’s Book of the Year, and Smithsonian Magazine Notable Book for Children, among many others. Her book EcoMazes: 12 Earth Adventures was named a Smithsonian Magazine Best Science Book for Children and received a starred review in School Library Journal. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

Gr 3–6—Complex structures built by eight insects and one arachnid are featured in brief, extravagantly illustrated, enormously enlarged entries. Each creature is introduced on an oversize spread: "This is an Organ-Pipe Mud Dauber. Where does it live?" No clues are provided, but the following spread with a cutaway view of the nest or other construction and a dense paragraph of explanation offers a cursory answer to the question. "The Organ-Pipe Mud Dauber (Trypoxylon politum) is a wasp named for the nest of long, narrow, multicolored tubes made of dried mud and often attached to a wall." Some further description of the insect's behavior or its building method is given, but there's no indication of its actual size, its changing form as it lives and matures in the nest, or its geographical location. The Australian Weaver Ant and the African Termite have names offering clues, but the honeybees and some others do live in more nearby places. Munro uses the four-page guessing-game scheme she used in Hatch (Marshall Cavendish, 2011), which introduces different eggs and the birds hatching from them, but the exaggerated views and sketchy, often-difficult explanations make this title more of an album of curiosities. Large and heavy in the hand, the book has bold views that might attract browsers.—Margaret Bush, May 2012


Many-legged home-builders are rendered in remarkable artwork. Eight habitat-building insects plus one spider are introduced. Each receives a close-up two-page look at the animal alone followed by a full-spread painting of the web, hive or mound in which it lives, here accompanied by a description of its hunting, nesting and food-storage habits. For most of the insects, the habitat provides a way to store its eggs and hatch and nurture larvae; the spider uses its web to capture its food. The full-color ink illustrations work well to give a sense of the creature’s body structure as well as of the general look of the hive or nest for each. The individual portraits are terrifically impressive, while the handsome habitat paintings show very well from a slight distance, making this a good choice for reading aloud to a group. Munro includes within each habitat drawing a close-up or cutaway interior look at a piece of the structure. The information presented is clear and unadorned, densely packed in a trim, compact type against the background of the habitat paintings. More information appears on the insect-focused introductory page directly opposite the title-page verso, and a glossary of “Bug Words” along with a brief list of resources is included on the last page. Enticing as an introduction to insects and spiders. (Nonfiction. 4-9) -Kirkus Reviews, March 2012

Edition details

• Publisher: Two Lions
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761461051
• ISBN 13: 9780761461050
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Munro Roxie
• Number of pages: 40