THE SONGS OF INSECTS
By Lang Elliott and Wil Hershberger
Houghton Mifflin, 2006
Category: Nonfiction for Adults
Friends, this book is a treasure.
I know, I know. You think you don’t need a field guide to the most common crickets, katydids, grasshoppers and cicadas of eastern North America. But consider this delightfulness:
Now, tell me … if you could find a field guide that felt like visiting that website, wouldn’t you want to own it? A book chock full of images so stunning that you are both mesmerized and curious? A book that reminds you to slow down and consider sounds that are so common you’ve almost forgotten they are there?
Yes? I thought so. Well, both book and website are part of the creative vision and inspirational mission of Mr. Lang Elliott: to promote the understanding and appreciation of “nature near at hand.” And both are worth exploring thoroughly.
THE SONGS OF INSECTS is the perfect resource for naturalists-in-the-making, and although it is written for adults, it has mega kid-appeal. My nine-year-old daughter spent hours with it this past summer, consulting its sights and sounds as we puzzled out players in nighttime choruses from Massachusetts to Maine. A word of warning: your child will discover in the pages of this book that there are some singing insects whose songs become harder for humans to hear as we age. And if your kids are as fresh as mine, one night soon, as you are outside listening to the sounds of nature together, this may happen:
Fresh Daughter (stopping and cocking her head): Mom! Shhhh! Do you hear that?
Me (stopping and cocking alongside her): No.
Fresh Daughter: There it is again. Sort of high pitched. You don’t hear it?
Me (listening harder): No. I can’t hear anything.
Fresh Daughter (now giggling uncontrollably): Oh. Sorry. It must be one of those crickets that old people can’t hear.
She finds this endlessly amusing. And to be honest, so does her mother. What’s not to love about a moonlit adventure inspired by a book and decorated with the sounds of insects singing and your child giggling?
A treasure, I tell you. A treasure.