THE THREE LITTLE TARDIGRADES

A familiar folktale with a microscopic twist.

Tardigrades, also known as “moss piglets” and “water bears,” are renowned for their extreme durability. So it is that when Mother Tardigrade, being “a staunch advocate for fostering early childhood independence,” sends her offspring, Gavin, Colin, and Doug, off to explore the big wide world, they find agreeable new digs in (respectively) an erupting volcano, an Antarctic ice cave, and on the moon. Moments of terror ensue when a Big Hairy Wolf Spider tracks the three down in turn, but the extreme environments quickly send the hapless arachnid packing. Fay kits out her looming spider and rotund microfauna with big pop eyes for extra cuteness but otherwise renders them with reasonable accuracy and closes with boxes of tardigrade facts, plus a glossary of “slightly scientific terms” used in the narrative. Following the lead of Eugene Trivizas’ Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig (1993), illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, the author also gives the tale a happily-ever-after for all, as the scorched, hypothermic, suffocated, but otherwise unharmed spider, “transparent liquid welling up in his lacrimal glands,” tells Mother T that he was only looking to make friends, and she, suffering from empty-nest syndrome, invites him to stay for tea and cake.

Compelling fare for bloodthirsty young STEM-winders.