Backyard Bugs

Crawling with full-color, larger-than-life photographs, Backyard Bugs depicts the amazing bugs we see around us every day in an altogether new light. From common pill bugs to exotic-looking... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811809072
• ISBN13: 9780811809078
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Chronicle Books
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 1.0" x 1.0"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

Beautiful Bugs

As a landscape architect and garden consultant, I was taken by the beauty of each of the creatures presented by Robin through her lovely photographs and witty writing. As you start to thumb through this little morsel of a book, you can't help but stop on each page and marvel at the detail, color and uniqueness of each bug. It's a fascinating piece which my granddaughters will soon be getting copies of.

Lovely, Quirky Fun

I love this book. It is not a field guide, it's a thing of beauty. More of a Victorian natural history journal with a contemporary twist.Ms Kittrell Laughlin has wonderful photographs of insects that seem to reveal the characters of her subjects, or at least their quirky beauty or strangeness. They are presented in a diminutive sized book that fits it's diminutive subject matter. The text reveals the equally quirky aesthetic, experience and sense of humor of it's author. As a painter I use it as one of the things I look at to set my creative juices flowing.

Backyard Bugs

I'd like to respond to Kimberly Wilson's review of my book, Backyard Bugs. She intimates that I "got it published" through connections revealed in the acknowledgement pages. How would she know? Actually, Chronicle Books asked me to do the book based on my postcards of bugs that an editor there had seen. Luckily I had some friends with places where bugs are allowed to exist. PLease pass this on to your reviewer, Miss Know It All. Thanks, Robin K. Laughlin

a one of a kind bug book

The author sees the wonders of the everyday insect and inspires that wonder in me through her written description of each bug and the clear photograph of each insect. She has a wonderful sense of humor and can tell a good story which holds my interest and keeps me turning the pages and savoring each bug story. The author writes about the crablike spiny orb weaver spider. "I found her in an azalea tree in northern Florida. These tiny spiders live on the edges of woodlands and in shrubby gardens. Their range extends from the southeastern United States west to California. They eat the small insects that they catch in round, vertical webs that they weave anew each night. The male is even smaller than the female and is seldom noticed, unlike most males in the animal kingdom." I have given this book to adults and children who marvel at the wonders of nature and who love a good story.

Stunning photos of bugs and thought-provoking text.

Ms. Laughlin offers us 50-odd stunningly beautiful full-color portraits of more or less common insects, spiders, centipedes and other "bugs," along with commentary ranging from her experience with a particular bug to where she was in her life when the photo was taken. Apt literary quotes add a final delicious spice to this sumptuous book. Some scientific information is included but we are rightly urged to first marvel, and ask questions later.