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SUPER BUGS by Michelle Meadows

SUPER BUGS

by Michelle Meadows ; illustrated by Bill Mayer

Pub Date: June 28th, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-68756-0
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic

A simple, rhyming text describes one day in the life of bugs with enormous eyes and red capes as they save many other insects from harm.

Orange front endpapers and green rear endpapers sport yellow, comical outlines of various bugs with such facts as “ANTS carry many times their own weight!” (This ant raises a dumbbell.) Fine print on the copyright page explains that “true bugs” have a proboscis and also gives technical information about the colorful artwork. The art rarely shows proboscises, but then again, it shows such things as roaches playing baseball. The first double-page spread reveals three heroic bugs in capes and begins a litany that repeats in between other verses throughout: “Antennae up, eyes down. / Buzzing all around the town. / Super Bugs, Super Bugs, / mighty, mighty Super Bugs!” The rescues include saving a stinkbug from falling, pulling ants and termites from a fire, and pushing a grasshopper away from a “whopper bopper”—a large tomato. In addition to the repeated chorus, there are other catchy phrases, such as, “Beetles cheer, never fear.” After a long day of heroics, colors fade to twilight tones and fireflies blink goodnight—too quick a conversion after many pages of vibrant color and intense activity. Moreover, the comical cuteness both does away with two of the insects’ limbs and makes it hard to distinguish stinkbug from cricket from roach, leading to critter fatigue.

Not captivating but fun for some.

(Picture book. 3-5)