Children's books about insects and pollinators

Ten Titles on Tuesday: 4/13/21

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday. Tuesday!

This week’s Ten Titles, never in any particular order:

1. Gladiola Garden by Effie Lee Newsome

2. Pittipat’s Saucer of Moon by Geraldine McCaughren

3. Sad Underwear and Other Complications: More Poems for Children and Their Parents by Judith Viorst (what an amazing title that is)

4. Alaina and the Great Play by Eloise Greenfield

5. Jayden’s Impossible Garden by Mélina Mangal

6. Turandot by Marianna Mayer

7. Zonia’s Rain Forest by Juana Martinez-Neal

8. The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes

9. The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog by Adam Gidwitz

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Mini issue: Insects, pollinators, and some insects that are also pollinators

My husband works as a soil conservationist for the federal government, so we have long lived under a kind of constant Earth Day in our home — a situation that only got more intense when he got involved with the Monarch Initiative, a federal program for the butterfly, and we began putting more effort into our own pollinator habitat, converting more than 40% of our land to pollinator habitat/prairie, meaning at least in part that our 2-acre plot often makes us look like lazy homeowners (our neighbors have reported us to our village more than a handful of times — I’ve gotten pretty good at defending native plants and their wild ways to strangers that show up and walk around my yard to investigate). We’ve had a bat box in every house we’ve ever lived in (they’re my favorite animal on earth and I never tire of watching them in the summer twilight). We don’t keep bees because that’s illegal in our small town (though we’ve spent years considering how to get around that, i.e., just straight-up ignoring the ordinance and getting right with paying the $500 fine) but in any case, our efforts on behalf of pollinators is another example in our life of connecting everything to reading and reading to everything, which I babbled about last week in the April issue of (How) Can we read?, if you want pop back and see what I mean.

This is also my way of celebrating Earth Day — thinking about the ways in which we live on this small piece of the planet we were stupidly lucky to get, what we do with our time here, how we walk gently and take good care. I think when children can make connections to things in a concrete, sensory way — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and yes, even intuiting (of course I believe in the sixth sense) — they form a relation that might not otherwise occur. In this case: when kids can access the wonder of the world right in front of them through their bodies and minds, they’re more likely to care about and take care of that world. See a bee, know a bee: save a bee, save the planet. Or something like that.

So here, in honor of the fascinating and miraculous creatures that keep our earth literally and figuratively humming, a list of books (fiction and nonfiction) about insects, pollinators, and some insects that are also pollinators:

• Kaia and the Bees by Maribeth Boelts

• Hey There, Stink Bug! by Leslie Bulion (poetry)

• Tiny Bird: A Hummingbird's Amazing Journey by Robert Burleigh

• Stellaluna by Jannell Cannon

• Oddhopper Opera: A Bug's Garden of Verses by Kurt Cyrus (poetry — this is a fun one)

• Bats Love the Night by Nicola Davies

• Hummingbird by Nicola Davies

• The Clover & the Bee: A Book of Pollination by Anne Ophelia Dowden

• Bats by Gail Gibbons

• The Honeymakers by Gail Gibbons

• Be Nice to Spiders by Margaret Bloy Graham

• Flowers are Calling by Rita Gray

• Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman (poetry — amazing poetry)

• The Bug Book by Sue Fliess (great photos in this one)

• UnBEElievables: Honeybee Poems and Paintings by Douglas Florian (poetry)

• The Honeybee by Kirsten Hall

• How to Hide a Butterfly & Other Insects by Ruth Heller

• The Reason for a Flower: A Book About Flowers, Pollen, and Seeds by Ruth Heller

• The Bat-Poet by Randall Jarrell (for older children or read-aloud — Randall Jarrell is superb)

• The Leaf Men: And the Brave Good Bugs by William Joyce

• The Beeman by Laurie Krebs

• Bat Citizens: Defending the Ninjas of the Night by Robert Laidlaw (reference-y and full of great photographs)

• Bats at the Library by Brian Lies (also Bats in the Band, Bats at the Ballgame, and Bats at the Beach, but the library one is my favorite, naturally)

• The Thing About Bees: A Love Letter by Shabazz Larkin

• Grasshopper on the Road by Arnold Lobel (this is excellent on audio, on its own or part of The Arnold Lobel Audio Collection by Arnold Lobel)

• Butterfly Park by Elly McKay

• The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco

• Bea’s Bees by Katherine Pryor

• Bee: A Peek-Through Picture Book by Britta Teckentrup 

• The Bumblebee Queen by April Pulley Sayre

• Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow by Joyce Sidman (poetry — not exclusive to pollinators alone but too good not to mention)

• Terry and The Caterpillars by Millicent Selsam

• Bees: A Honeyed History by Piotr Socha (almost a reference book, but informative and beautifully designed)

• Ladybug, Ladybug, Where Are You? by Cyndy Szekeres

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Read good books and take good care 😘
Sarah
@can_we_read