CREEP, LEAP, CRUNCH! A FOOD CHAIN STORY

A rhymed climb up a food chain.

Shaffer and Neal follow a series of creatures: plants that create their own food with the help of the “glorious, life-giving, fiery sun,” a cricket that munches on grass, a mouse that eats the cricket, a red milk snake that swallows the mouse, a red hawk that hunts the mouse, a fox that pounces on the hawk, and, finally, a bear that makes a meal out of the fox. More bloodthirsty young readers may be disappointed that both author and illustrator largely leave out the CRUNCH! part of this natural progression—in the illustrations, only the foliage suffers, as none of the featured eaters are shown actually chowing down on animal prey, and the language is likewise abstract. The general concept is clear enough, though, and in both the cumulative rhyme and the nature notes at the end, Shaffer complements Neal’s pettable-looking creature cast with easily digestible descriptions of behaviors and diets. The author properly acknowledges that this particular chain “occurs in a temperate deciduous forest,” and if she never explicitly introduces the more complicated (and accurate) notion of food webs, she does finish off her narrative by noting that “some days” the fox gets away, whereupon the “hungry black bear / munches flowers and seeds… / all that she needs.”

Very simple, a little bland, but a good and read-aloud-ready way of introducing an important natural process.