Spiders »

For the first to third grade set, spiders are fascinating and suitably gruesome, especially when looked at in EXTREME close-up. Amazing images show the beauty and otherworldliness of spiders. Simple, engaging text conveys basic information about spiders as well as cool and quirky facts. One stop-action montage shows a spider leaping twenty times its body length!

School Library Journal

Gr 3-5 Dazzling full-color close-ups of over 15 arachnids-including a freeze-frame series of a jumping spider hurtling across the gap between two blades of grass-provide eye-catching visuals from cover to cover. The chatty text accompanying these spiffy shots is generic information printed on colored pages, with dominant factoids set in larger, more colorful type-e.g., "Fishing spiders rest at the water's edge with one foot on the surface." The excellent author's note is a great introduction to the minutiae of a nature cameraman at work, providing a sense of real-time research to the entire book. While more simplistic than Seymour Simon's equally attractive Spiders (HarperCollins 2003), this title is an attention-grabber and, paired with Michael Elsohn Ross's Spiderology (Carolrhoda 2000), it might have kids poking into basements and peering into leaf litter to observe these fascinating arachnids caught in mid-skitter by Bishop's sensitive lens.-Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY