Picture-book naturalist Jim Arnosky presents an engaging, informative and useful guide for young bug lovers in this slim volume. A few pages of text introduce bugs, which the author uses colloquially to include both insects and arachnids, giving information on identifying and diagraming different kinds, as well as safety tips on avoiding harmful species likes wasps and ticks. The rest of the book is given over to blank pages, which the young bug lover can use to record their own findings, while outside...

Published in 1997, Bug Hunter is one of four titles in the Jim Arnosky's Nature Notebooks series - the others are Animal Tracker, Bird Watcher and Shore Walker - which is intended for use by the child themselves, in their own outdoor nature study. Although I myself will not be using the book in this way - I read it digitally, as part of a project to familiarize myself with Arnosky's work - I appreciated the informative text and the useful design. I also liked that the author covered safety issues and modeled a respectful approach to the subject of collecting, mentioning it only in the context of insects that had already died, rather than live specimens. It is unfortunate that this book and its companions are out of print, but I would still recommend them to young animal and nature lovers, provided they can locate unused copies. ( )

This book would be good to use for a unit on insects or bugs. Depending on the level of the classroom you would probably have to read this book to the children since it is a more advanced book. Non fiction can be hard for early learners to read as well. This book would be good to go through all the different insects and where they live, which ones to leave alone, which ones are harmless and etc.