Straightforward, pleasing explorations of two common insects presented by and with photographs from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Each describes the insect’s body, diet, life cycle, and community in a perfect amount of detail for this age. Both books offer hands-on activities, though Ants, with its child-friendly experiment on the sense of smell, contains more science than the making of model flowers in Bees (1-55337-065-1; paper 1-55337-656-0). (On the other hand, the latter gets to talk about all that honey.) The photographs and illustrations are accurate, lively, and clear; particularly fine close-ups show the queen ant laying heaps of eggs and a worker bee coated in pollen. Well-designed, well thought-out, these will satisfy young listeners and encourage further research in slightly older kids. (Nonfiction. 3-8)
