ALA Booklist

Here comes another buddy duo, that narrative staple in the world of easy readers. This time it's a pair of worms, Wiggle and Waggle. Four short stories chronicle their adventures. In the amusing "A Digging Song," the worms find digging hard work, so they make up a song: "We wiggle and waggle, squiggle and squirm; Digging in dirt is the life of the worm." The second chapter is a little flat, just moving a rock. But things pep up in the last two vignettes, where the worm buddies go for a picnic (dirt rolls!) and tunnel out their names. Longer than some easy readers, such as Mo Willems' recent titles about Elephant and Piggie, this will give new readers a bit of a challenge. The artwork, done in earth tones, of course, features two goofy, google-eyed worms. Good quality paper and an attractive design add to the book's pick-me-up quotient.

Horn Book

Five short chapters depict the daily lives of a pair of earthworm best friends. Wiggle and Waggle exercise teamwork and sing a song as they loosen the earth in a garden, also making time to take a picnic break. The easy-to-read text and friendly digitally colored pencil illustrations tell an amusing story while also imparting some facts about earthworms and gardens.

Kirkus Reviews

Arnold, known for her science nonfiction, tucks plenty of natural history into this quintet of easy reading tales. Singing a work song—"We wiggle and waggle, squiggle and squirm. / Digging in dirt is the life of a worm"—two earthworms aerate a vegetable garden, work together to shift a rock out of the way, picnic beneath a bucket on dirt rolls and bug juice, play in a rain puddle and, finally, at summer's end, tunnel down for a long rest. Placing her worms in a well-tilled setting among healthy-looking veggies, Peterson endows them with smiles and goggle eyes, plus subtle differences in body color and, for Waggle, a pair of eyeglasses. An altogether agreeable visit to the garden, unsurprisingly capped by a page of additional worm facts. (Easy reader. 6-7)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

The eponymous heroes of this early reader are two genial, googly-eyed earthworms who are also best friends. In five short chapters, Wiggle and Waggle (the latter, distinguished by a pair of glasses) learn that singing makes a job go faster; a difficult task—moving a big rock out of a tunnel—is made easier when individuals work together; and a rainy day needn’t be a spoiler if you have an upbeat outlook. Arnold’s (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Super Swimmers) writing has an easygoing cadence and just the right amount of repetition (“They dug long tunnels, short tunnels, fat tunnels, and thin tunnels”), although her wrap-ups for each story can be fairly anticlimactic (after a day of singing and digging tunnels, Waggle muses, “We are a good team.... Let’s dig again tomorrow”). Peterson (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">No Time to Nap!) is all-around terrific, tightly cropping her environments to keep the action focused on her characters and conveying a sense of contrasting scale (an unharvested carrot dwarfs the two worms). As for the two leads themselves, they’re spunky, comically gangly and just vulnerable enough to be adorable. For youngsters smitten by this duo, a list of facts about worms and how they contribute to a healthy garden concludes this cheery collection. Ages 5-8. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(July)

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 3-In this beginning reader, two earthworms, one pink and the other tan, have five adventures gyrating through the garden. In the process, information about worms and how they help a garden grow is conveyed. To make their work more interesting, the worms sing a little ditty as they aerate the soil. They also have a picnic with dirt rolls, bug juice, and mud pies during a rainstorm. The simple illustrations enhance the humor and provide the graphic support that new readers need. This would be a wonderful companion to Doreen Cronin's Diary of a Worm (HarperCollins, 2003). The book concludes with "Fun Worm Facts" and "How Worms Help Plants Grow."-Elaine Lesh Morgan, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.