Face Bug

K-Gr 5—Visitors to this book get close-up, photographic views of 15 amazing creatures, including the Hickory Horned Devil and the Nursery Web Spider, whose eyes are impossible to avoid counting. "Eight black eyes in a whiskery face,/Eight round eyes in a dark crawl space/That never bother blinking back/Could give a kid a heart attack!" The endnotes, "written" in first person by the various bugs, describe "Where I Live," "How I Grow," "What I Eat," and "What Eats Me" with scientific accuracy and humor. Budding bug fans will love this title. The poems are funny and based on actual bug behavior and attributes, the photographic portraits of the faces and eyes are marvelous, and the ink and graphite drawings guide readers through the museum collection. Murphy's anthropomorphized creatures visit the "Nectar Café" and try on different pairs of glasses to sample being bug-eyed, compound-eyed, eight-eyed. The interactive science museum has gizmos such as cicada sound buttons and a camouflaged Goldenrod Stowaway Moth hidden in a cluster of flowers. Readers will not see bugs again in the same way: "You may think you've seen our Show Bugs in the trees or in the sky,/But you never really know bugs till you look them in the eye." There will be many returns to the Face Bug Museum as this book has so much to offer. Wonderfully conceived and executed.—Teresa Pfeifer, The Springfield Renaissance School, Springfield, MA