99 Books Like Insects Do the Strangest Things

I couldn’t leave out this second collection of stories from Karen Russell. Similar to her debut collection but wholly unique, Vampires in the Lemon Grove is the darker, haunted sibling of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Even though many of the stories lean more toward horror than fantasy, there remains a sense of wonder, magic, and humor throughout. The story about the rules of Antarctic tailgating for the Food Chain Games pitting Team Whale against Team Krill is one of my favorites.

Across the globe, silks have been the most prized textiles for a very long time. They are also among the most expensive, owing to the difficulties and skills involved in cultivating silkworms, unreeling and spinning raw silk, and then weaving it into cloth.

Despite the complications involved, silk’s desirability led settlers throughout the colonial Americas to try time and again to establish silkworm-raising and silk-making enterprises. Their ambitions were just as repeatedly frustrated.

Ben Marsh’s beautifully written, deeply researched study tells why they kept trying and why they kept failing. When I first encountered this book, I wondered whether a study of flop after flop could possibly be interesting. I wonder no longer. Failure turns out to make for a fascinating story.

This nineteenth-century classic, by one of the great naturalists to ever turn his talents to the enigma of metamorphosis, is simply a delight to read.

Fabre was a recluse Frenchman from Serignan, known to aficionados as "the Homer of Insects." Fabre pricked a chrysalis with a knife and discovered a syrupy goo gushing slowly like lava from a volcano, which led him to believe that a caterpillar literally melts before rebuilding itself into a butterfly.

Today we know that's not really true: metamorphosis is a carefully constructed symphony of cell destruction and growth - and we can watch it all happen in real time with special cameras!

But the quaintness and beauty of Fabre's tales remain unsurpassed. 

I loved that this lift-the-flap Usborne book not only focused on where human babies come from but also included facts on animal babies.

This helps children understand that even in nature, babies are born, and just like human babies, they grow and are taken care of by their parents. I also liked the vivid illustrations that helped to complement the Q&A format of this nonfiction book.

This book is simple and captivating.

It’s no wonder it's a classic and enjoyed over and over again by families all over the world. There are so many ways to use this book in the kitchen with kids, but my favorite way is to use it to learn about fruit.

I used to read this book to my children and students and then review the many types of fruit in the story. Afterwards, it was fun to make a rainbow fruit salad and munch away just like the hungry caterpillar! It is also helpful for identifying and discussing the differences between healthy vs. unhealthy foods.

The book also includes: early learning for babies and toddlers of first food recognition, especially fruits; learn days of the week, numbers 1-5, and primary colors; review beginning, middle, and end of a story arc; and scientific process of metamorphosis. 

This is a brilliant tale about a little egg that becomes a caterpillar and transforms into a beautiful Monarch.

I love animal stories, so I would always recommend this story to anyone.

He is asking his friends eating away on juice leaves, the sparrow, the toat, and the rabbit how he could get wings. He wanted desperately to fly.

The answer was: Just have patience and follow your instincts.

Matilda was doing so until she ate so many leaves that she changed once more and fell asleep. Waking up, she was amazed to see that she had wings. But they wouldn’t work, she had to keep flapping them until, finally, she flew off.

Matilda is not only a little butterfly story, it shows you that whatever you are going to do, have patience, follow your dream or instincts, and never give up.

With charming illustrations, this picture book biography tells the story of E.B. White with exquisite language.

I love how Barbara Herkert provides details about his interest in animals from a young age, such as how he collected pigeons, snakes, polliwogs, caterpillars, chameleons, and more.

In a fitting ending, the book shows how E.B. White gets the idea for one of my favorite books, Charlotte’s Web. I love these lines from A Boy, a Mouse, and a Spider: “One cold October evening, Andy watched a spider spin. He climbed a ladder for a closer look. He’d found the hero of his story…” 

Here's a little-known gem that is clever and witty, packed with funny incidents and terrible puns. It’s about downsizing consultant Graham Paint who owns the eponymous insect. Much to his inconvenience, the caterpillar (which, like its namesake cat, exists in a state of quantum uncertainty) starts spawning alternative realities, each with their own copy of Graham – causing havoc for him, and the police. The storyline has echoes of the Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors, but is much funnier and smarter. Oh, and check out the book’s trailer on YouTube.

This book is by an insect physiologist named Vincent G. Dethier. This book reveals the amazing and beautifully intricate behavior and physiology of a common moth (generally considered a pest). Expectations were high as his previous book To Know a Fly went beyond the physiology and elevated the common housefly to a comic character through his sketches. Tent-Makers is about the common "Tent caterpillars" that infest fruit trees and he includes sketches of these animals in their natural environment. This book, though small in size, is concise, succinct, and explores the physiology and behavior of these animals as they face one problem after another throughout their whole life cycle of a year. It is a work of sound scholarship derived from a close look at natural history. It is an in-depth view in non-technical language on a topic not generally penetrable to a general audience but here presented for the… show more.

A must for all bug lovers (as well as those who need convincing)! This is a sweet book with a traditional feel to the illustrations, and the only rhyming book on my list. I love it because it captures a child’s perspective on the world so beautifully. It has great messages about enjoying the outside world and making a difference no matter how small you are. There are fun fact pages too about various minibeasts!