Customer Reviews

Face to Face with Caterpillars (Face to Face with Animals)

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The photos in this book are exceptional. They are large and close-up and varied. I got it for my 3-year-old son for Christmas. As he loves pictures of insects, I expect he's going to be wowed by this book.

If you see a "winged adult" you know you are looking at a caterpillar who beat the odds because most of them end up being lunch for another predator as they are quite low on the food chain. Not all caterpillars are harmless, but most tend to be. The author was stung by the spines of one during a photographic shoot in the wild and was reeling in pain for twenty minutes. There are approximately "17,000 species of butterflies and 145,000 species of moths." If you are a butterfly or moth hunter, you will have plenty to add to your visual collection!

In this book you will learn about how they live, what they eat, some of the unusual ways they protect themselves, how they camouflage themselves, their life stages (metamorphosis), how they see, how they breathe with spiracles, their assorted diets, how they often "become dinner themselves" and you'll learn about some unusual caterpillars who make their homes with ants. Did you know that if a predator tries to attack a tent caterpillar it will "vomit a toxic chemical?" That is one caterpillar that means business!

This book reads like a novel and the magnificent accompanying photographs are very appealing and add as much to the book as the text does. Many of the photographs are what I call "extreme closeups," ones that really make the book come alive because the reader almost gets a microscopic view of the caterpillar. In the back of the book is a glossary, an index, a section detailing "how you can help" caterpillars, suggested assignments and a two-page spread with concise facts. Caterpillars are on every continent except for one. Do you think you know which continent that is? If not, you might want to read this book!