about the book
In your face, bugs! It is the opening of the Face Bug Museum, and a host of bug-eyed museum-goers (the readers) are invited to investigate the unique features and ways of their fellow insects and arachnids.
For example, check out the Hickory Horned Devil, a gigantic (from certain bugs’ perspectives) six-inch caterpillar! Of course caterpillars eat only leaves, so you don’t have much to fear from this Devil. Unless he rolls over on you. Then there is the Nursery Web Spider: “Eight black eyes in a whiskery face, / Eight round eyes in a dark crawl space / That never bother blinking back / Could give a kid a heart attack!”
In the museum’s “Nectar Café,” the visitors can try on different goggles to get the perspective of a variety of bugs’ eyes, be they simple eyes, compound, and even spider eight-eyed.
“You may think you’ve seen our Show Bugs in the trees or in the sky, / But you never really know bugs till you look them in the eye.”
about the author
John Patrick Lewis was born in 1942 in Gary, Indiana, just twenty minutes after his twin brother. He wanted to be a DJ when he grew up…but found he hated talking to machines. He wanted to run the elevators at the Eiffel Tower…but was afraid of heights. After he grew up, he wanted to stay a kid. Instead, he earned a doctorate in economics and became a professor.
When John was forty, he rediscovered poetry.
Unfortunately, the poetry he wrote was very bad. So for three years, he read nothing but poetry and studied what he read. An editor told him to forget about writing poetry. She said there were enough children’s poets, but John was determined to prove her wrong.
While on a trip to Cumberland Falls, Kentucky, he saw a moonbow (a white rainbow). This rare phenomenon inspired his first children’s book, and since then he has published over 25 books!
John lives in Westerville, Ohio, with his wife, Susan. He visits fifty schools a year and talks about books and poetry. He tries to collect t-shirts with the school’s logo from each visit. So far he has over 400 T-shirts!
Source:
Author website
Also by J. Patrick Lewis:
When Thunder Comes : Poems for Civil Rights Leaders. Chronicle Books. 2013.
If You Were a Chocolate Mustache. Wordsong. 2012.
Last Laughs : Animal Epitaphs. Charlesbridge. 2012.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Pie : Math Puzzlers in Classic Poems. Harcourt Children’s Books. 2012.
Skywriting : Poems to Fly. Creative Editions. 2010.
Countdown to Summer : A Poem for Every Day of the School Year. Little, Brown and Company. 2009.
Underwear Salesman : And Other Jobs for Better or Verse. Ginee Seo Books. 2009.
The World’s Greatest : Poems. Chronicle Books. 2008.
Under the Kissletoe : Christmastime Poems. Wordsong. 2007.
Once Upon a Tomb : Gravely Humorous Verses. Candlewick Press. 2006.
Please Bury Me In the Library. Gulliver Books. 2005.
Arithme-Tickle : An Even Number of Odd Riddle-Rhymes. Silver Whistle. 2002.
about the illustrator
Kelly Murphy was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design, and even before she graduated, her work was receiving praises from the Society of Illustrators.
After getting her Fine Arts degree in 1999, Kelly has taken jobs from all over the globe, freelancing through editorial, educational, and book illustrations. She has also been known to create character designs and concept art for the film, theater, and even toy industries.
The year 2013 saw Kelly’s 25th book hit the shelves, and she couldn’t be more excited! Over the years Kelly has received numerous awards and recognitions, from places and groups like American Illustration, the Society of Illustrators, and “3×3 Magazine.”
Kelly lives in the New England area with her husband Antoine Revoy, a fellow illustrator.
Source:
Illustrator website
read more!
Bug Off! : Creepy, Crawly Poems by Jane Yolen
Outdoors and in, bugs go about their daily business. Bees make honey, butterflies land on their food and taste it with their feet, and lovebugs fly higher than the Empire State Building! Each of these thirteen bugs is given its own poem and featured in full-color close-up photos.
If You Were a Chocolate Mustache by J. Patrick Lewis
Haikus, limericks, riddles, and wordplay of all kinds combine to offer up a tasty and silly feast of fantasy. What if you really were a chocolate mustache? Or what if you could use a dragon as a clothes dryer? What happens when Bigfoot can’t find shoes in his size? And suppose you saw a fish driving a fancy convertible down the road? Would you think that it was fishy?
Nasty Bugs by Lee Bennett Hopkins
A host of today’s children’s poets have come together to create poems about their favorite creepy-crawlies! There are bugs cute and harmless that eat only leaves; and then there are bugs ugly, terrifying, and dangerous to animals and humans alike. And they get rhyming words and made up terms, like “yum-yucky” all to themselves!