ANTS

Straightforward, pleasing explorations of two common insects presented by and with photographs from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Each describes the insect’s body, diet, life cycle, and community in a perfect amount of detail for this age. Both books offer hands-on activities, though Ants, with its child-friendly experiment on the sense of smell, contains more science than the making of model flowers in Bees (1-55337-065-1; paper 1-55337-656-0). (On the other hand, the latter gets to talk about all that honey.) The photographs and illustrations are accurate, lively, and clear; particularly fine close-ups show the queen ant laying heaps of eggs and a worker bee coated in pollen. Well-designed, well thought-out, these will satisfy young listeners and encourage further research in slightly older kids. (Nonfiction. 3-8)