The Alphabet of Bugs is photo driven ABC edutainment

Depending on your child The Alphabet of Bugs is a great teaching book about the alphabet or a book that they’ll pretend to be scared of, but secretly will love looking at the vivid bugs while learning the alphabet. Each page has a very large alphabet letter on the left hand side with a full color photograph of an exotic bug on the right. It’s a book that will encourage curiosity with the bugs while teaching them their letters too.

This is intended for children between 3 and 5 years old, but the book is very intelligent. On every page where the large letter is shown there is also a five word poem that has every letter starting with the letter they’re learning. While children will enjoy looking at the pictures and learning the letters there are lots of words that they won’t be able to read.

I’m not disparaging your children when I say that. Even as an adult I needed to read the short sentences slowly the first time that I read them. And I still have trouble pronouncing some of the words dozens of times after I read it the first time.

It’s like the dinosaurs when you go to the museum. They have the words spelled out phonetically, but even then you have read it a couple of times before you can tell your children what dinosaurs you’re looking at.

Every page has a different colored back ground for the letter and bug, plus each color is not repeated again. This is great because it really makes the reader keep turning the pages. The bugs are all different colors on back grounds of different complimentary colors.

Let’s look at the Velvet Ant for a moment.  The “V” is framed by its color like a child’s alphabet block, with a white border and the letters that same color. The photo of the Velvet Ant itself is rich in sticky detail with the torso hairs look coarse, while the hair on its head looks fine.

Most of the critters in The Alphabet of Bugs are ones that you haven’t heard of. Granted a beetle is common, but an Ironclad Beetle is one that you don’t know. For the record, they look like an almond with a raisin skin, six stocky legs and two antennae that are probably looking for your picnic. “Ironclad Beetle integrates Iris iridescence” is what accompany its photograph.

My SAT word count has two in that sentence. After you read the page a couple of times you’ll be able to say the words with the playful speed they sometimes require.

Our biggest wish for the book is that it had slightly thicker pages. The Alphabet of Bugs doesn’t need board book page thickness, and while the pages are slightly thicker than most kid’s books it would behoove an alphabet book to assume that young readers haven’t mastered turning the pages of a book.

That complaint isn’t enough to spoil the creativity and good will that the book builds. The Alphabet of Bugs has great photography and clever prose to assist in teaching children the ABC’s and just a bit about bugs.