MOSQUITO BITE
By Alexandra Siy and Dennis Kunkel
Charlesbridge, 2005
Adults often dismiss children’s books, and I will never understand why. Children’s books rock! And I am not just saying this because I write children’s books. I truly believe that books written for children and young adults have a lot to offer adults. This is especially true in the non-fiction arena. Take for example mosquitoes. Why would anyone wanting to know just a little bit about these pesky creatures bother with a 250-page tome written for adults? Who really wants to know that much about mosquitoes? Okay, I am sure someone, somewhere needs all that information. But this week I just needed some basic mosquito biology to help me formulate a stance on the mosquito spraying going on in my state. And so I turned to the children’s section of my library. That is where I found MOSQUITO BITE, a well-informed and fascinating account of the life cycle of the common mosquito. It is written for middle-school aged children and it told me everything I wanted to know in 32-pages and in language I could understand.
MOSQUITO BITE opens with an inviting backyard scene: a group of kids playing hide-and-seek on a hot summer night. In black and white photographs we see a young girl seeking and a young boy hiding. A colorized inset photograph on the first page tells us straightaway that all is not as idyllic as it seems. Just as a blade of grass (when viewed at two hundred times its actual size with a scanning electron microscope, as it is in the inset) is not smooth, so a pleasant summer evening is not all fun and games. The old tractor tire the boy is hiding behind is filled with stagnant water, the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. And the boy, hot and sweaty and panting, is a perfect target for the female mosquito. As the hide-and-seek game unfolds, so does the mosquito drama. Through dazzling photomicrographs we see the female mosquito up close and in all her horrible completeness: massive eyes, hairy wings, bristly antennae and one nasty, knife-wielding proboscis. Pretty cool stuff. Scary, but cool. You should check it out.
Children’s books DO rock!
I have one more entry to complete Mosquito Week. Stay tuned …