• Age: 10 to 13
• Grade: 5 to 7

This book provides a sneak peak into the diverse and often hidden world of nature's strangest insects.

Insects account for more than half of the more than 17,000,000 named species of living things. This fascinating book reveals a rare and close up look at the odd beauty of some of the strangest of these tiny creatures. Despite their large numbers, the world of these particularly weird insects exists largely hidden from our view. Included in the book are some of the most interesting insects from North and South America, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand and beyond.

Weird Insects features:

• Beautiful photographs that show the insects in the wild
• Informative captions that provide fascinating details about the lives of these intriguing creatures.

The book will appeal to middle school students exploring topic ideas; younger students interested in wildlife and advanced readers who enjoy picture books.

Michael Worek is an editor and publisher with a lifelong interest in natural history.

Michael A. Worek's profile page

After a brief introduction extolling the diversity and anatomy that define and identifies insects, Worek gets to the task at hand, providing the common and Latin names of each subject before diving into short, factoid-laden paragraphs focused on the weirdest and most intricate insects found around the globe. There's no table of contents or even definitive groupings for the sequence in which the bugs appear. The photographs, however, redeem the spare layout, displaying our creepy-crawlies in all their odd glories. Some are jeweled, others translucent, and some are outright menacing, but the bright photographic depiction of each manages to be mesmerizing--sharp, full-color close-ups showcase the knobby, extended neck of the giraffe-neck weevil and the textured red-and-black back of the red velvet ant (which--surprise!--is actually a wasp). Those fascinated by the lovely variety of the insect world will have plenty to dissect here.

Booklist

Amazing photographs of many beautiful and bizarre insects make this book a browsers delight.

Puget Sound Council for the Review of Children's and Young Adult Literature

This stunning array of spectacular bugs is a companion volume to Erich Hoyt's equally eye-catching Weird Sea Creatures. A gallery of brilliantly clear, color photos gives intimate, close-up looks at just 59 of the millions of insects crawling, flying, scurrying, and burrowing on our planet, but Worek's choices open up a visual treasure house of the class Insecta. From metallic armored beetles to lacy-winged flies to spiny caterpillars, the pictures glow on the crisp white pages... This is not a book for in-depth research, but for the curious of mind and those with an understanding of biological diversity and evolutionary differentiation, it's a visual feast and--oh my--those pictures!

School Library Journal