HECTOR SPRINGS LOOSE
by Elizabeth Shreeve & illustrated by Pamela Levy
Shreeve opens a Ready for Chapters series with this engaging tale of a bug forced into a horizon-expanding odyssey when his cozy burrow is taken over by a flea circus. Being a wumble-bug—“a home-loving creature you won’t find in any book, except for this one of course”—Hector is understandably miffed to be forced out of his digs. Stuffing a backpack with gum, a pocketknife, and other necessities, he departs, little suspecting the discomfort, not to mention outright danger, he’s about to face from a frantic mother hummingbird, a hungry bullfrog, and other residents of his bug-eat-bug world. The author keeps the tone light, though, tucking in tongue-in-cheek details—being six-legged, Hector can play a piano duet with himself—and bringing her wandering wumble-bug back, with mementos of his travels, to a home from which the fleas have departed as suddenly as they arrived. Levy’s sketchy, full-page scenes (not really seen) provide a bug’s-eye view of Hector, bumbling his way through one misadventure after another. Lighthearted, slightly challenging fare for easy reader graduates. (Fiction. 7-9)