One of the activities I frequently enjoyed as a boy was “playing in the dirt.” I’d flip rocks, rummage in leaf piles, and make a host of other explorations that caused the knees of my dungarees to become stained with soil and grass pigments that drove my mother to distraction every wash day. As I saw it then – and still continue to today – stained trousers were a small price to pay for such important investigations.
When it comes right down to it, exploring the wonders to be found on the ground requires, well… getting right down to it. Hands and knees are the order of the day if a good look at things is to be obtained. Of course, once things are seen, learning a bit about what they are is also important. As adults, we run to keys and field guides. Children, however, have a few more options available to them (better options quite often, if we’re honest), including the unapologetic application of poetry and fanciful pictures to the task.
Leslie Bulion and Robert Meganck – author and illustrator, respectively – of Leaf Litter Critters clearly understand this. Ms. Bulion, whose previous nature-themed verse works include Hey There, Stink Bug and At the Sea Floor Café: Odd Ocean Critter Poems, has a delightfully playful way to take information about biology and turn into into whimsical and fun (as well as slyly educational) verses. These, when paired with Robert Meganck’s fantastical illustrations, accomplish in a few dozen pages what I’ve seen “serious” biology textbooks fail to do with hundreds: make the animals and fungi in the soil level decomposer trophic level and their respective activities not only easy to understand but effortlessly memorable.
Beginning with the introductory “Litter Critters” to introduce the world about to be explored, and following upon that with “Bacteria Criteria,” Bulion and Meganck lead their young readers on a journey of increasing levels of life-form complexity that ends with rove beetles and the concluding poem “A Few Favorite Brown Food Web Kings.” Included as well are a handy glossary, short explanatory notes on the poems included, suggestions for some field experiments, and even a very useful size comparison chart for the creatures discussed. And lest parents and teachers feel that they will be left uninformed when their offspring begin asking further questions based on what they’ve learned from the poems, each poem is followed by a handy “Science Note” to help them maintain the appearance of wisdom (that they’ll lose soon enough when their curious kinder reach their teen-age years).
I don’t review many books written specifically for children here in The Well-read Naturalist, so when I do, you can be confident that I found it to be of particular merit, judged by an even more rigorous standard than the books normally reviewed here. And indeed, Leaf Litter Critters is a book of particular merit that I hope anyone raising or teaching elementary to middle-school age children will consider adding to their library. What it teaches it teaches both playfully and effectively, and lays the ground work (sorry…) for further explorations a-plenty.
Title: Leaf Litter Critters
Author(s): Leslie Bulion, illustrated by Robert Meganck
Publisher: Peachtree Publishers
Format: Hardcover
Stated Age Range: 8 – 12
Pages: 48 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-56145-950-6
Published: 1 March 2018
In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.
