Bugs Are Insects

I love this let's read and find out science series. I purchased this book for use with a science unit on living things for level 1 students (Ages 3-6). The book exceeded my expectations. The illustrations are fantastic. I am now looking for more books illustrated by Steve Jenkins--very impressive. Not only is the book great for science, I also use it for math, reading, and language arts. The author also lists several learning activities at the end of the book and she provides curriculum support websites for extention activities.

This book is great because it is easy to read, clear in terminology and fun to read at the same time. My students are middle school students learning English, this book can be very informative and clear up any misconceptions of English words and definitions regarding bugs and insects. That can be enormously important in learning science in a language a student is not fluent in.

I am a preschool science teacher and I have found this book to be incredibly helpful when we were learning about how living things are classified. When learning about invertebrates, this is the book to have! The language is age appropriate and the illustrations are excellent. My preschoolers love this book! They walk away with a lot of information that is easy to remember.

My 3-year-old daughter is crazy about all the creepy crawly critters of the world, so I knew she would love this book, and her father and I think it's pretty cool as well. The cut paper illustrations are wonderful to look at, and the text is quite informative for readers of any age, yet it's accessible to even young preschoolers like mine. However, I do have one criticism of the book, which is that it depicts crabs, lobsters, shrimps, and centipedes without offering any explanation of what kind of animals they are. The book also mentions spiders, scorpions, and daddy longlegs, and for these we are told that they are arachnids rather than insects, so why the lack of clarification for the other non-insect arthropods? It would have been very simple and logical for the text to include the information that crabs, lobsters, and shrimps belong to a group of animals called crustaceans, which is related to insects and arachnids, and that centipedes are members of another related group called myriapods. That's it, nothing more complicated would have been necessary... Or else don't introduce those animals at all. But don't make a point of putting them in the book only to say, "These are not insects," and then not bother to properly identify them for the reader; that's pointless and likely to leave many kids (and probably most parents) confused. Still, the book is otherwise so nice, I wish it was possible to deduct only half a star from its rating for that one flaw.

This book is a very good resource for study/teaching at the primary grade levels. The cut paper illustrations are beautiful and engaging. The text more than holds its own by giving young readers a chance to observe and compare many different kinds of insects and even an arachnid or two. Readers learn for themselves precisely 'what makes an insect an insect', while at the same time picking up a few good science vocabulary words and catching a glimpse of several dozens of different insects, (all of which are identified at the back of the book). Also included is a page with several suggestions for follow up activities.