The Little Buggers: Insect & Spider Poems

An assortment of poems featuring insects and spiders.

Grade 1-4?This collection of light verse about insects and spiders ranges from free form to rhyming stanzas. Subjects include a vegetarian spider who passes up a cicada and "The Almost Indestructible Last Housefly of Summer" who "Wipes his feet/On...NutraSweet!/Hear the ZZZZZ/Of housefly buzz?/That is what he is/?or was!" Most are infused with offbeat, slightly macabre humor. Delicate, fiendishly agile illustrations in watercolor and sepia offer a perfect complement to the tone and humor.?Sally R. Dow, Ossining Public Library, NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Aimed at a younger audience than its wittier, more sophisticated cousin, Paul Fleischman's Joyful Noise (1989), this collection of poems celebrates bugs. Lewis (The La-Di-Da Hare, 1997, etc.) has keen antennae for wordplay, seeking ways to exploit types of insects by making their attributes humorous. One poem features a praying mantis who kissed her mate on the first date, ``then ate the pesky fellow.'' Another zooms in on the vexing reputation of the housefly. Relationships to humans, referred to as ``Them'' in a silly poem about silverfish, fall under scrutiny; a plug for reading sneaks past in a poem about book mites; a cockroach announces that it was born ``outside a place called Blueberry Muffin Mix.'' Other snappy subjects include a streetlight where all the buggy locals hang out, and the myriad names for butterflies. While couple of poems feel forced--``The Doodlebug Song'' strains for comedy while ``The Ladybug'' labors under its staccato rhythm--most are as short and rapid as insect chatter, as in the quip between ``The Stinkbug and the Cricket.'' Chess's insect personifications are suitably wacky, exaggerating the insects' large mouths and eyes and tiny feet. The title of each poem twists across the page, adding extra zip to the critters we so often zap. (Poetry. 5-8) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ages 5^-9. Although the title is certain to raise the eyebrows of some British library patrons, Lewis' bug poems will tickle the funny bones of the elementary-school set. Twenty-four poems in a picture book format occasionally celebrate the beauty of insects (the ladybug is a "speckled spectacle of spring"), but they arouse a giggle more often than they spark a sense of wonder--as, for instance, when the groom disappears after a spider weds a fly. Chess' watercolor-and-ink pictures are a good match for the slightly macabre humor. The insects and spiders are a chunky, wild-eyed group, and most have shoes enough for all their feet. Not as rich or as deep a collection as Douglas Florian's Insectlopedia , but this will be good fun as an additional purchase. Susan Dove Lempke