Bustle in the Bushes

PreS-Gr 1—Cheerful poetry and perky artwork celebrate creepy crawlies found in backyards. An opening verse establishes the sunny, summer-day setting and refers to the contents; a closing one summarizes the book's theme. Sandwiched between are 15 poems, each of which incorporates a fact or two about a different bug commonly known to children, and for which the verse is named, for example, "Fly," "Beetle," "Spider," "Bee." Other selections are devoted to the snail, slug, worm, earwig, centipede, stick insect, and dragonfly. When read aloud, most of the playful poems flow well, but a few have an awkward line or two. Wojtowycz's illustrations pop with bold colors as smiling bugs fly, crawl, slither, and jump along the large pages. One to two poems appear on each spread. On the final page, a night sky with Moon and stars brings the collection to a restful close. At times, wiggly or slanted lines of text add motion to the verses. Andreae's poems are lighter than those in Douglas Florian's Insectlopedia (Harcourt, 1998) and Barry Louis Polisar's Insect Soup (Rainbow Morning Music, 1999), and they have a narrower focus than David L. Harrison's Bugs: Poems About Creeping Things (Boyds Mills, 2007). The approachable style of Bushes exposes young children to the world of bugs in a nonthreatening way. This picture book would fit well into early-childhood units on insects, and the individual poems could be sprinkled into bug-themed storytimes.—Lynn Vanca, Freelance Librarian, Akron, OH