WHAT'S THAT SOUND, WOOLLY BEAR?

With a caterpillar in the title role and newcomer Paley's collage illustrations, this book inspires inevitable comparisons to Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. However, this non- anthropomorphized lesson in entomology is aimed at a slightly older crowd than Carle's toddlers. The ``huffle-shuffle'' of the woolly bear, or tiger moth caterpillar, is contrasted with the varied sounds and movements of flashier bugs. The woolly bear's quietness pays off when she emerges from her cocoon as a tiger moth who can ``whif-whaf'' into the sky. Sturges (The Gift of Christmas, 1995, etc.) allows the text to huffle-shuffle along in woolly-bear fashion, offering basic scientific facts about the insects that are more fully explained in the back of the book. The dynamic illustrations create an illusion of sound and movement through onomatopoeic words incorporated into swirling color patterns. A solid introduction to a few members of the intriguing world of insects. (Picture book/nonfiction. 4-8)