I Love Bugs! by Philemen Sturges

I Love Bugs! by Philomen Sturges, illustrated by Shari Halpern

Rating: 4 stars

I'm not sure when to break it to Lorelei and Ben that I've actually tasted a few bugs, and not just when I was running really fast on a particularly gnatty day.  When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Thailand, I clearly remember the khun yaais or grandmothers of the village standing by the porch light grabbing the flying whatever-they-were and yanking their wings off of them, then throwing them into a bucket, where they'd soon become part of an omelet.

Yum!  Are you hungry now?

I think I have a year or two until I can start with my Peace Corps stories.  I'm going to save them in my back pocket until I need Lorelei and Ben's full attention, because there are some good ones tucked away for that day.

Until then, we have this book, which Ben LOVES.  He might cry when we return it to the library (but, luckily, our local library has a copy of it, so we can check it out almost anytime we want).  It's a simple little book with just a few rhyming stanzas that outline the simplest things that bugs do.  There are more words on the front and back jacket of the book where all the bugs are drawn, labeled, and described.  I've read this to Ben a few times a day for the past week, and he seems to love it even more each time.

Since our house is surrounded by woods, we see a lot of bugs--and not in our omelets.  So it's fun to see them where they should be (i.e., in the pages of a book) rather than where they shouldn't be (i.e., eyeing me up in the shower).  Philemon Sturges has a whole series of books like these--she seems to love all the things Ben loves, including trucks and planes and trains and tools--so we'll be checking those out soon.

In the meantime, we love bugs!  We love them outside more than inside...