Little Snail’s Book of Bugs (The Big Book Series) by Yuval Zommer
This article first appeared in the NY Journal of Books on 30 April 2024.
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“Little Snail wants to explore.
"He leaves his friends in the yard and glides away.”
So begins Little Snail’s Book of Bugs, the next title in Yuval Zommer’s Little Book series, based on his award-winning Big Book series that has been published in 30 languages and has over 2 million copies in print.
Little Snail glides beyond the yard to discover ten other garden species. Flying ladybugs, buzzing honeybees, sweets-engorging flies, food-collecting ants, singing crickets, burrowing earthworms—Little Snail joins them all as they take part in the sounds and movements of the garden world.
The ladybugs are “flying over the flowers,” the ants are “carefully collecting food to share,” and the earthworms are “burrowing under the ground.”
The prose is easy and repetitive in its word usage, instilling a metric pattern that little ears will recognize. But there are no surprises in the author’s impressions, which repeat plain concepts found in a plethora of similar books on preschool shelves in libraries and bookstores.
As is typical with many books of this genre, the magic is in the pictures. Zommer’s illustrations are colorful, chock full of details, and crowded with bugs, enticing little eyes to spot every creature on each page, making it a good book to teach counting.
Every other page contains simple words, all in caps, that describe each insect’s movements as it is introduced. “BUZZ, BUZZ,” “YUM, YUM,” “WRIGGLE WRIGGLE”—these words draw extra attention and, perhaps, induce word recognition in little minds.
What’s more, the chunky board pages are easy for little hands to hold and turn, making it a good tool for teaching toddlers how to physically read, as they turn the pages from right to left all by themselves.
Little Snail’s Book of Bugs is aptly assigned for babies through four-year-olds and will serve as motor-mechanics-developing eye candy as much as an engaging teething toy.
