A DOG'S BOOK OF BUGS

In the solemn parade of significant titles, a show-stopper: A Dog's Book of Bugs. The relationship is largely accidental: dogs chase bugs across these pages and sometimes get stung, but mostly they watch while assorted bugs burrow and buzz and bring home the honey. As drawn--crisply, delightfully, inventively--the dog is a shaggy, swayback fellow of no determinate breed, but the bugs are pin-point perfect specimens of each kind. Humorous details await discovery everywhere: in the ball-and-claw of an old-fashioned bathtub invaded by silverfish; in the figures-S that the cockroach makes as it skedaddles across the board floor. These enliven snippets of information about typical bug behavior--but the punch comes from the cumulative impact of the imaginative conception. It's mostly useless, completely entertaining, and too good to keep ""For dogs only.