Short and informative, The Book of Tiny Creatures is a children’s guide to the behaviour and habitats of bugs, mollusks, worms, and winged insects.

There are five chapters. Three organise species by habitat: ground-dwellers, water creatures, and flying insects. The opening chapter covers body types, growth, and reproduction, and the concluding one champions record-breaking species and identifies household critters and common pests.

The illustrations throughout are elegant and clear. The use of text boxes, columns, and relief keeps the information distinct and approachable. Cross-section diagrams reveal the inner secrets of structures like anthills and bee hives.

Children are encouraged to get involved. The Little Workshop pages demonstrate different ways of carefully catching tiny creatures, how to make a snail terrarium, and ways of building bug shelters in the garden from flowerpots and simple piles of leaves.

There are four full spread illustrations of habitats - a garden balcony, meadow, forest, and seashore - with observation skills questions like: “What is attacking the spider?” There are also two somewhat dry multiple-choice quiz pages, with answers provided.

More than 180 creepy-crawlies are illustrated: among them banana slugs, bootlace worms, black widows, brimstone butterflies, and mason bees.

It’s a great book for classrooms and home libraries. My four-year-old was pouring over the most frightful looking creatures with fascination.

The Book of Tiny Creatures by Nathalie Tordjman will be published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2021. The original French edition was published in 2018 under the title Le Livre Aux Petites Bêtes by Editions Belin. The book is illustrated by Julien Norwood and Emmanuelle Tchoukriel.

Many thanks to Princeton Architectural Press, NetGalley, and Nathalie Tordjman for my advanced reading copy.

Keep your bucket and microscope on hand for:

Ocean Anatomy by Julia Rothman The fourth in Rothman’s delightful series of illustrated nature notebooks covers marine topics like bioluminescence, migrations, and the Great Garbage Patch; popular wildlife species including penguins, sharks, otters, and polar bears; and the extraordinary creatures from the midnight zone.