Here are 100 books that Insects Do the Strangest Things fans have personally recommended if you like
Insects Do the Strangest Things.
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I’ve always enjoyed short story collections. Starting with Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, I became a fan of the short form. And as a burgeoning writer, writing short stories was the best way for me to learn the craft of storytelling. While I started out writing supernatural horror, I gradually found myself combining horror, fantasy, and science fiction with dark comedy and social satire, creating a blend of genres. Several of the short story collections I recommend here were instrumental in my evolution as a short story writer and inspired a number of the stories in my latest collection, Lost Creatures.
I couldn’t leave out this second collection of stories from Karen Russell. Similar to her debut collection but wholly unique, Vampires in the Lemon Grove is the darker, haunted sibling of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Even though many of the stories lean more toward horror than fantasy, there remains a sense of wonder, magic, and humor throughout. The story about the rules of Antarctic tailgating for the Food Chain Games pitting Team Whale against Team Krill is one of my favorites.
From the author of the novel Swamplandia!—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author’s gifts at their inimitable best.
Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms and plot revolution; a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow that bears an uncanny resemblance to a missing classmate that they used to torment; a family’s disastrous quest for land in the American West has grave consequences; and in the marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove…
I’ve always wanted to know why people acquire the things they choose, how they get them, and what they do with them. For years, too, I’ve been fascinated by the period when modernity was being born, a time full of worldwide exploration, the founding of new nations and societies, and the invention of new ways of making, transporting, and distributing all sorts of goods and services. I discovered that studying consumers, consumer goods, and trade from the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century was the perfect way to satisfy my curiosity. The Material Atlantic is my report about what I’ve learned.
Across the globe, silks have been the most prized textiles for a very long time. They are also among the most expensive, owing to the difficulties and skills involved in cultivating silkworms, unreeling and spinning raw silk, and then weaving it into cloth.
Despite the complications involved, silk’s desirability led settlers throughout the colonial Americas to try time and again to establish silkworm-raising and silk-making enterprises. Their ambitions were just as repeatedly frustrated.
Ben Marsh’s beautifully written, deeply researched study tells why they kept trying and why they kept failing. When I first encountered this book, I wondered whether a study of flop after flop could possibly be interesting. I wonder no longer. Failure turns out to make for a fascinating story.
One of the greatest hopes and expectations that accompanied American colonialism - from its earliest incarnation - was that Atlantic settlers would be able to locate new sources of raw silk, with which to satiate the boundless desire for luxurious fabrics in European markets. However, in spite of the great upheavals and achievements of Atlantic plantation, this ambition would never be fulfilled. By taking the commercial failure of silk seriously and examining numerous experiments across New Spain, New France, British North America and the early United States, Ben Marsh reveals new insights into aspiration, labour, environment, and economy in these…
I've written more than 100 books including the counting booksDinner at the Panda Palace(HarperCollins / PBS StoryTime) andDozens of Dachshunds(Bloomsbury / Scholastic Book Clubs). I also write easy readers such asStomp! (Ready-to-Read / JLG) and early chapter books including the Our Principal series and, with Magic School Bus author Joanna Cole,The Adventures of Allie and Amyseries. As a former early childhood teacher and children's book editor, I'm a big fan of counting books and look forward to writing – and reading – many more.
On Monday, a tiny, very hungry caterpillar ate through one apple.
"But he was still hungry."
On Tuesday, he ate through two pears, on Wednesday, three plums, and so on through the week.
When he gets to Saturday, he eats way too much, starting with one piece of chocolate cake and ending with one slice of watermelon.
That night he has a stomach ache! The caterpillar recovers on Sunday and, no longer tiny and no longer hungry, he builds a small house around himself called a cocoon.
In time, he becomes a beautiful butterfly.
With cutout pages and gorgeous Eric Carle art, this book is a joy to share with young children.
There are so many ways to spend a sunny summer day. Join The Very Hungry Caterpillar and explore everything the season has to offer!
Celebrate summer with The Very Hungry Caterpillar and his friends in this exploration of the season. Young readers can learn all about seasonal sensory experiences, like listening to noisy bugs, feeling the warm sunshine, smelling the yummy scents of a cookout, and so much more!
I started writing children's books to connect more with my daughter. When she was born, I struggled to bond with her because I felt like I had lost part of who I was. My husband reminded me how important it was to build a strong bond with her, so I began spending more one-on-one time with her. Our favorite activity was looking for the moon together, which led to my first book, "Mommy, Mommy, Where Is The Moon?". When my son came along, I made sure my daughter knew she was still loved, promising our special time together wouldn't stop and she would always be my first baby.
I loved that this lift-the-flap Usborne book not only focused on where human babies come from but also included facts on animal babies.
This helps children understand that even in nature, babies are born, and just like human babies, they grow and are taken care of by their parents. I also liked the vivid illustrations that helped to complement the Q&A format of this nonfiction book.
A delightful way for young children to discover where babies come from - from baby humans to kittens, caterpillars and kangaroos. Young children can lift the flaps to find out how babies are made, when they are born, what new babies need and how they grow. A charming, age-appropriate introduction to the facts of life to share with young children.
Who, apart from the innately humorless, doesn’t like a good laugh? We do, whether it’s at Mark Roman’s opera singing or at Corben Duke’s naked balloon dance. We also enjoy funny science fiction books. We’ve tried writing them, too, but it’s devilishly difficult. So, time and time again, we turn to the masters in the field to see how they did it, studying the words they used, the way they joined them together, and where they inserted the punctuation marks. Most instructive. Here are our top five and their funny SF books.
Here's a little-known gem that is clever and witty, packed with funny incidents and terrible puns. It’s about downsizing consultant Graham Paint who owns the eponymous insect. Much to his inconvenience, the caterpillar (which, like its namesake cat, exists in a state of quantum uncertainty) starts spawning alternative realities, each with their own copy of Graham – causing havoc for him, and the police. The storyline has echoes of the Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors, but is much funnier and smarter. Oh, and check out the book’s trailer on YouTube.
Graham Paint is a downsizing consultant, and sick of it. One morning he misses his bus when he stops to put a strange caterpillar in a matchbox. As the bus passes he's shocked to spot himself inside. Like Schroedinger's Cat in the famous quantum thought experiment, the caterpillar has spawned parallel possibilities. This comic novel explores Graham's search for a better life among the various overlapping alternatives. Another clone, Grim Dupeint, is a loathsome international arms dealer. Graham infiltrates Grim's corporation, then embezzles cash for charity. When a furious Grim realises, Graham throws him overboard from his luxury yacht and…
After being rejected in school, because I had to move with my family again and again, I never had really friends and knew how being left alone and rejected felt. So I put my nose into books and developed a love for writing. Since I didn’t know what to do with them, I left them alone when I married. After being diagnosed with cancer later in my life, I couldn’t go back to work, I remembered my love to write and read so I started to write short stories again. I want to help young people going through similar rejections and bullying, to lift them up, and take the negativity out of their minds.
This is a brilliant tale about a little egg that becomes a caterpillar and transforms into a beautiful Monarch.
I love animal stories, so I would always recommend this story to anyone.
He is asking his friends eating away on juice leaves, the sparrow, the toat, and the rabbit how he could get wings. He wanted desperately to fly.
The answer was: Just have patience and follow your instincts.
Matilda was doing so until she ate so many leaves that she changed once more and fell asleep. Waking up, she was amazed to see that she had wings. But they wouldn’t work, she had to keep flapping them until, finally, she flew off.
Matilda is not only a little butterfly story, it shows you that whatever you are going to do, have patience, follow your dream or instincts, and never give up.
Inspire the Kids with an Award-winning (Excellence in Children's Literature) Monarch Butterfly Tale. In this age of instant gratification, there's an award-winning children's picture book out that teaches kids that patience and hard work really do pay off.
'AMAZING MATILDA: A Monarch's Tale' is a timely tale that follows MATILDA, a tiny monarch caterpillar, from the time she hatches from her egg on a giant milkweed leaf until she realizes her dream to fly. The story provides challenges and adventure at every turn.
Grandparents, parents and teachers will find that AMAZING MATILDA is a book that kids will want to…
I am the author of many acclaimed books for children. Connection, compassion, and family are common themes in my work. My books include Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: One Girl Can Make a Difference, Flying High: The Story of Gymnastics Champion Simone Biles, and Brave Ballerina: The Story of Janet Collins. I also contributed research and writing to Black Ballerinas: My Journey to Our Legacy by Misty Copeland. I studied journalism and literature at Syracuse University.
With charming illustrations, this picture book biography tells the story of E.B. White with exquisite language.
I love how Barbara Herkert provides details about his interest in animals from a young age, such as how he collected pigeons, snakes, polliwogs, caterpillars, chameleons, and more.
In a fitting ending, the book shows how E.B. White gets the idea for one of my favorite books, Charlotte’s Web. I love these lines from A Boy, a Mouse, and a Spider:“One cold October evening, Andy watched a spider spin. He climbed a ladder for a closer look. He’d found the hero of his story…”
A lyrical biography of E. B. White, beloved author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, written by Barbara Herkert and illustrated by Caldecott honoree Lauren Castillo.
When young Elwyn White lay in bed as a sickly child, a bold house mouse befriended him. When the time came for kindergarten, an anxious Elwyn longed for the farm, where animal friends awaited him at the end of each day. Propelled by his fascination with the outside world, he began to jot down his reflections in a journal. Writing filled him with joy, and words became his world.
Biology is the study of life, and I cannot think of anything more important. It’s like being interested in what’s happening to the ball when you are playing the ball game. I was very fortunate to have grown up in close contact with nature and it led me down this path. I love discovering intricate mechanisms not by thoughts but with data. Those discoveries almost always turn out to be surprising and more than what had, or could be, imagined and assumed.
This book is by an insect physiologist named Vincent G. Dethier. This book reveals the amazing and beautifully intricate behavior and physiology of a common moth (generally considered a pest). Expectations were high as his previous book To Know a Flywent beyond the physiology and elevated the common housefly to a comic character through his sketches. Tent-Makersis about the common "Tent caterpillars" that infest fruit trees and he includes sketches of these animals in their natural environment. This book, though small in size, is concise, succinct, and explores the physiology and behavior of these animals as they face one problem after another throughout their whole life cycle of a year. It is a work of sound scholarship derived from a close look at natural history. It is an in-depth view in non-technical language on a topic not generally penetrable to a general audience but here presented for the…
Study of the life cycle of a colony of eastern tent caterpillars. This book traces this insect's special life history within the total context of nature, discussing both the larger and smaller worlds these creatures encounter during their life span.
I write books for children of all ages but I began with picture books, and they will always have a special place in my heart. I like all different types of picture books. Sometimes we read for pure entertainment, and sometimes to find out about the world, but the books on this list hit the sweet spot between the two. They are all books that will inspire further conversation and might even lead to related projects at school or home.
A must for all bug lovers (as well as those who need convincing)! This is a sweet book with a traditional feel to the illustrations, and the only rhyming book on my list. I love it because it captures a child’s perspective on the world so beautifully. It has great messages about enjoying the outside world and making a difference no matter how small you are. There are fun fact pages too about various minibeasts!
Meet Betsy Buglove in this magical picture book - a girl who LOVES bugs more than anything else in the world! In a big, bustling town lived a girl who loved bugs,
from earthworms to ladybirds, woodlice and slugs.
While spiders or ants might make some scream in fright
to her, creepy crawlies were such a delight!
If there's anything to know about Betsy Buglove, it's that, when she's around, no bug ever has to worry about getting in trouble. Betsy's not afraid of sticky goo, tangled webs, or even muddy boots, no!
I studied Greek philosophy in college and graduate school and wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on Plato. In response to the environmental crisis, first widely recognized in the 1960s, I turned my philosophical attention to that contemporary challenge, which, with the advent of climate change, has by now proved to be humanity’s greatest. I taught the world’s first course in environmental ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 1971 and, with a handful of other philosophers, helped build a literature in this new field over the course of the next decade—a literature that has subsequently grown exponentially. With Greek Natural Philosophy, I rekindled the romance with my first love.
A renowned historian of science, Clagett carries the story of Greek science forward all the way to the sixth century CE—a span of 1200 years. From that point in time, Greek science passed into the hands of Islamic scholars who advanced it further, especially the mathematical sciences.
This book is not, like ours, organized chronologically and developmentally but according to modern scientific domains—biology and medicine, mathematics, physics, and astronomy. And it focuses on specific scientific inquiries, while we focus on more general and fundamental things like ontology (what exists), cosmology (the overall structure of the universe), the laws of nature, and the drivers of change and motion.
This book is thus a complement to ours in its wide historical sweep and in what it highlights.
Greek Science in Antiquity is a comprehensive book written by Marshall Clagett that explores the scientific advancements made by ancient Greeks. The book covers a wide range of topics, including mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, and medicine, and provides a detailed account of the theories and discoveries made by Greek scientists from the 6th century BCE to the 5th century CE. The book begins by examining the early Greek philosophers and their contributions to the development of science, including Thales, Pythagoras, and Aristotle. It then delves into the mathematical achievements of the Greeks, such as the invention of geometry and the discovery…
