An engaging argument for keeping bugs as pets.
A debut nonfiction book offers stories about endearing insect pets.
In this work, Lori-Michele introduces readers to the menagerie of insects that have kept her company over the past decade. Her pets have mostly been Western conifer seed bugs—a handful of shield bugs round out the collection—and the author has gotten to know the insects as individuals as well as on a species level. Lori-Michele explains how her first Western conifer seed bug came to take up residence in her home. She recounts the system she developed for interacting with the insects and taking care of them, from bottle caps filled with sugar water to small cloth beds where the bugs tuck themselves in every night. All the insects have names, and the author describes the highly individual personalities she has observed in each. Much of the text consists of stories about the antics of Maybe, Peppercorn, Cautious, Ribbon, and their compatriots, who enjoy being petted, keep their owner company while she watches TV or uses a computer, and occasionally get rough with other bugs. Lori-Michele’s close connection to her insects has led her to conclude that they are capable of both feeling and understanding emotions and are more intelligent than both entomologists and laypeople generally believe (“Entomologists completely dismiss the notion of the Western conifer’s ability to love and their intelligence because they are not shown to look for these things or that they matter”). Insect aficionados will be tempted to embrace the book’s detailed instructions for caring for Western conifer seed bugs after reading the author’s passionate advocacy for them. The text can be repetitive (for instance, readers are instructed three times in 10 pages to clean and refill the bottle cap feeders), and the prose is unpolished, with occasional comma splices and misused words. But Lori-Michele’s enthusiasm for her bugs makes for enjoyable reading, and her meticulous observation of their behavior supports her arguments for their emotional intelligence. Numerous photographs by the author throughout the text illustrate the behaviors described and showcase the insects’ individuality.
An engaging argument for keeping bugs as pets.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-98-461725-8
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote...
Two republished tales by a Greco-Cherokee author feature both folkloric and modern elements as well as new illustrations.
One of the two has never been offered south of the (Canadian) border. In “Coyote Sings to the Moon,” the doo-wop hymn sung nightly by Old Woman and all the animals except tone-deaf Coyote isn’t enough to keep Moon from hiding out at the bottom of the lake—until she is finally driven forth by Coyote’s awful wailing. She has been trying to return to the lake ever since, but that piercing howl keeps her in the sky. In “Coyote’s New Suit” he is schooled in trickery by Raven, who convinces him to steal the pelts of all the other animals while they’re bathing, sends the bare animals to take clothes from the humans’ clothesline, and then sets the stage for a ruckus by suggesting that Coyote could make space in his overcrowded closet by having a yard sale. No violence ensues, but from then to now humans and animals have not spoken to one another. In Eggenschwiler’s monochrome scenes Coyote and the rest stand on hind legs and (when stripped bare) sport human limbs. Old Woman might be Native American; the only other completely human figure is a pale-skinned girl.
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote tales. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55498-833-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
In a large, handsome format, Tarnowska offers six tales plus an abbreviated version of the frame story, retold in formal but contemporary language and sandwiched between a note on the Nights’ place in her childhood in Lebanon and a page of glossary and source notes. Rather than preserve the traditional embedded structure and cliffhanger cutoffs, she keeps each story discrete and tones down the sex and violence. This structure begs the question of why Shahriyar lets Shahrazade [sic] live if she tells each evening’s tale complete, but it serves to simplify the reading for those who want just one tale at a time. Only the opener, “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,” is likely to be familiar to young readers; in others a prince learns to control a flying “Ebony Horse” by “twiddling” its ears, contending djinn argue whether “Prince Kamar el Zaman [or] Princess Boudour” is the more beautiful (the prince wins) and in a Cinderella tale a “Diamond Anklet” subs for the glass slipper. Hénaff’s stylized scenes of domed cityscapes and turbaned figures add properly whimsical visual notes to this short but animated gathering. (Folktales. 10-12)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84686-122-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
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