Review: Have no fear, Emma Child is here!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 19, 2014
Emma Child knows how to get her reader's attention as wells as any one writing educational books for children. Her previous books such as SHARKS and SNAKES are big successes, so now she addresses SPIDERS. She faces the reader head on with previously ingrained false information, challenges the reader to see the whole picture, and ends up creating a fascination about her topic complete with diagrams and photographs. For example, on writing a book about an insect that strikes fear in the mind of most every one, she begins her book as follows: `When you hear the word "spider," what do you think? Does it bring to mind a hairy, scary creature with eight legs? Or are you one of those people who actually likes spiders and finds them fascinating and beautiful? Whether spiders remind you more of creepy Halloween decorations or the sweet, kind haracter Charlotte in the famous book Charlotte's Web, today you will learn that there is a lot more to these amazing creatures than meets the eye!'Child first discusses and illustrates the anatomy of spiders, shows us where they live (practically everywhere), shares that they have several pairs of eyes, discusses their webs - how they are made and used, enters that scary world of venomous spiders (their venom paralyzes their victims), what they eat, how they hunt, colonize, mate, create new spiders (breeding and hatching). She then surveys Black Widows, the Brazilian Wandering spider, Violin spiders, crab spiders, water spiders, jumping spiders, tarantulas and ends the book with some very interesting myth-breaking facts.Throughout this book there are some of the finest photographs of nature's creatures by any photographer today. It is a beautiful, education, entertaining and resource of the truth about arachnids. Grady Harp, March 14