No Backbone! The World of Invertebrates

This series allows readers to come safely eye-to-eye with larger-than-life spiders of all shapes and sizes. The texts, which are occasionally too vague, offer basic and interesting facts about spiders’ body structures, their young, how spiders eat, and where they live. Their many vivid close-up photographs are the books’ main appeal.

This series allows readers to come safely eye-to-eye with larger-than-life spiders of all shapes and sizes. The texts, which are occasionally too vague, offer basic and interesting facts about spiders’ body structures, their young, how spiders eat, and where they live. Their many vivid close-up photographs are the books’ main appeal.

Each book is devoted to a particular spider type, covering key topics such as food, habitats, defense, and life cycles. Spreads include four or five simple sentences, each neatly spaced by a carriage return, facing a vivid, close-up view of the spider in action. Word balloon captions highlight details when needed and smaller photographs on the text pages provide further visual reference. The excellent photos depict draglines, fangs, and even the shooting hairs of a tarantula in satisfying detail. Better yet, the well-chosen scenes relate directly to the words to demonstrate basic concepts in meaningful ways that readers will remember.

Young children will surely be fascinated to discover the wonderful world of spiders in this set of six slim books for readers in the early elementary grades. My own children, and students I have taught, found these eight-legged invertebrates to be a little scary yet absolutely mesmerizing! In addition to showing spiders in their natural environment or in captivity, vivid photographs and accompanying informative text in these books provide specific details of black widows, garden spiders, jumping spiders, trapdoor spiders, and hairy tarantulas.