Insectlopedia

1. BIOGRAPHY
Florian, Douglas. 1998. INSECTLOPEDIA. ILL. by Douglas Florian. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace & Company. ISBN 0152013067

2. PLOT SUMMARY
This is a book full of twenty-one short humorous poems and illustrations about spiders and insects which include pupa’s renting a room, inchworms not getting a speeding ticket to ticks not being romant-tic. Each poem presents interesting facts along with silly lines that will spark any reader’s imagination.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Florian has written and illustrated a delightful collection of poetry about insects and spiders. It includes a Table of Content that list all twenty-one titles that are presented in the book which will help the reader navigate throughout. Each poem establishes a vivid image (“I am the dragon fly, The DEMON of skies”) and yields facts about each bug that will spark any reader’s curiosity. The reader will find that Florian uses wordplay, puns, and alliterations (The Crickets: They chirp and cheep for free) to emphasize the different types of bugs. Sometimes the text will take the shape of the bug or the content. Example of this is found with the Whirligig Beetles; the text is in a circular shape to imply swimming in a circle or the Inchworm text gives the image of an inchworm moving little by little. The author shows some personification when “The Crickets, are fiddling and singing.”
Readers will be amused by the illustrations that Florian has painted on brown paper bags with watercolors. These illustrations are done with earth tone colors such as browns, oranges, yellows, greens etc… giving the effect of nature. The pictures are set on the opposite page of the text and placed within a border. The border helps to draw the reader’s attention to the illustrations. Both illustrations and text complement each other and create an image that is both witty and informative. This book will engage any reader and will help teachers use this as an opening to any insect unit.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
Publisher’s Weekly: "The silly, imaginative verses about whirligig beetles and water bugs (almost) match the exquisite pictures in playfulness and wit. The result is downright stunning," said PW.

School Library Journal: “These portraits build on the imaginatively integrated realistic and anthropomorphic images created in the text. There are other books of poetry about insects and lots of collections of humorous verses about animals but none match Insectlopedia.”

Kirkus Review: “The watercolor illustrations, abstract and stylized, achieve a comic effect by incorporating collage elements reminiscent of an entomolgist's field notes.”

5. CONNECTION
Activities: Students will split into groups and research an insect or spider. They will create a PowerPoint presentation on their bug. As a group students will create a new type of bug that has all the characteristics of an insect or spider and tell about its habitat, food it eats, what is special about it, etc… Then students will design a model of their new bug and present PowerPoint and model to class.


Other books by author:
Florian, Douglas. LIZARDS, FROGS, AND POLLIWOGS. ISBN 9780152052485
Florian, Douglas. MAMMALABILIA. ISBN9780152021672