Boing! A bouncy book of bugs

‘Hey, little bug…’ James Carter addresses a bug, his poem neatly fitting into Neil Layton’s image of a bug. Surrounding this ‘bug’ are a variety of species cheerfully waving at the spectator while in an attractive box at the bottom of the page Carter explains with commendable brevity what a bug is; and there is a picture to illustrate this.  Though this is not the opening poem of this lively picture book collection, which aims to marry lively verse with facts to engage the very young, it neatly characterises the approach of the poet and the illustrator.

Information books aimed at Early Years and KS1 look to present the facts in a very straightforward concise format, sometimes enlivened by elements of paper engineering. Here Carter – one of the most established poets for the young – takes a more novel approach; he combines his lively, humorous , punchy verses with carefully selected facts. The whole is brought together by Neil Layton’s energetic, amusing illustrations. A poet deals in words – so overlaying the facts and the illustrations is the vocabulary. Words spin out – a stampede of millipedes, a flickery flame – rhyme and rhythm, alliteration and acrostics; all to attract the ear and the attention. But just in case you are missing the point, there are those pop-out facts where you can learn about spiders, dung beetles, moths, even tardigrades. Neil Layton’s illustrations provide the perfect match. The bright saturated colours and energetic images capture the lively bugs being described. These are not photographic representations; they are designed to give the twenty-four creatures presented by Carter, characters. Combined, the verses, the facts, the visuals, really do ‘boing’ off the page. This would be ideal shared within a classroom.