Everything you never knew you wanted to know about earthworms and didn’t know to ask. An endearingly impassioned look at the lowly earthworm introduces readers to their anatomy and behavior, helps readers to identify different earthworm species and habitats and discusses their importance in the ecosystem (“In a world without worms, we’d all be buried under mountains of dry leaves and dead bugs”). Brief chapters discuss the various aspects of earthworm study, including Charles Darwin’s decades-long experimentation and observation of the ubiquitous invertebrate. Photographs combine with drawings in a nicely varied design that keeps interesting what is at bottom a pretty graphically boring subject. Hands-on activities will have young readers out grubbing up inhabitants for their very own wormeries (Darwin did it, after all) and building under-the-sink composters. It’s an appealingly enthusiastic approach to biology that just about every reader will be able to participate in—after they use the book to help their parents overcome their own squeamishness, that is. (Nonfiction. 6-10)