From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 1—Digital illustrations explore perspective as a crew of insects joins together to clean up a construction worker's littered tuna-fish sandwich. Rhymed couplets like, "Clear that thicket, dozer cricket" on each page feature creatures such as an ant, a weevil, a pickleworm, an earwig, and a dragonfly. The oversize views of bugs will delight many children, as will the construction analogy, which is reinforced by distant views of a corresponding piece of heavy machinery. Unfortunately, some of the scenes are blurry, and in one case the insect's head is obstructed by the pickle it carries. The closing line, "See you later, excavator," keeps the rhythm bouncing to the end, and Cyrus's general concept is unique.—
Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Short rhyming couplets describe the work of bugs devouring a big, sloppy sandwich tossed aside at a construction site, making it seem as if the bugs were the construction vehicles doing the work. In Cyrus' trademark supersize images, oversize bugs are placed in the foreground so that they dominate and tower over the insect-sized machinery pictured far in the background. A millipede is dramatically juxtaposed with a crane (“Take the lead, / millipede”); a cricket with a bulldozer (“Clear that thicket, / dozer cricket”); ants with a forklift (“Ants that lift, / sort, and shift;”); a dragonfly with a helicopter (“Hoist it high, / dragonfly”); and so on. The striking, bold digitally created illustrations (including the contents of the sandwich, which practically ooze off the pages) and the crisp, carefully chosen text make good bedfellows. The massive bugs here contrast nicely to those in Cyrus' other insect opus, Oddhopper Opera (2001), as well as I Love Bugs, by Philemon Sturges (2005). Used together, they would indulge the enthusiasm of most budding entomologists. Preschool-Grade 1. --Randall Enos
