Minibeasts

Review also includes:

Weather, 978-0749648602

In Minibeasts, Ellie finds a ladybird and establishes its insectivity by counting its legs. She then becomes acquainted with other six-leggers – butterflies (who drink through a hollow tube like her straw), bees and dragonflies. She then discovers spiders and we deduce that they’re not insects before going onto snails. Each subject’s life-cycle is explained and the underlying principle of ‘the fewer legs you have the more you, in infancy, resemble your parents’ is neatly defused by the observation that hatchling spiders are ‘perfect tiny spiders’.

While you have to look for minibeasts, weather will find you wherever you are. Joe lives in a nice house with a view of trees so the hot weather takes him and his suncream out for a picnic. Then he goes kite-flying (where do you think the water goes when the washing dries?), gets wet, sees a rainbow and relishes the ripeness of apples and tomatoes. And this all in one day, seemingly. Next day it’s a thunderstorm – he stays inside but acknowledges that a tree may fall on the house. Happily all that does fall is hailstones which remind Joe of last winter’s snow and ice. Thoroughly inspired, Joe and his mum set up their own weather-station and a new Michael Fish (and, heaven knows, we need one) is in the making.

A friendly pair of starter-books are here made more valuable by the incidence of unanswered (but well-clued) questions amongst a lively text.