Lice, fleas, ticks, leeches, liver flukes, tapeworms: "Mini bugs rule!"Using repetition as a pedagogic strategy, selected mighty mites are introduced twice—once with basic facts captioning Calle's cartoon illustrations and snarky comments in dialogue balloons, and then on facing pages with large portrait photos and similar but differently presented information. In this volume Turner adds to the insects and other creatures already mentioned the tubby tardigrade, roly-poly woodlice, velvet worms (a deceptively cozy moniker: "the velvet worm shoots twin jets of slime from its face-guns, leaving the victim helpless to defend itself"), and some many-legged myriapods. The close-up photos are presented in ghastly color, with insets representing scale in silhouette. In companion galleries in the Crazy Creepy Crawlers series, Turner offers titillating assortments of Deadly Spiders, Extraordinary Insects, and Flying Creepy Crawlers. Of particular interest to browsers may be the picture of the black widow spider lurking on the toilet seat in Spiders and the truly Extraordinary giant weta (short for wetapunga, Maori for "the god of ugly things"). Suitable browsing for fans of all things crazy, creepy, and crawly. (Nonfiction. 8-12)

Turner highlights small but mighty creatures-including ticks, fleas, lice, millipedes, and tapeworms-in one of four titles kicking off the Crazy Creepy Crawlers series, illustrated through a combination of photographs and comics-style sequences. Highly magnified images of the microscopic creatures reveal the fine details on their pincers, legs, antennae, and outer shells, while captions and bursts deliver facts about their habits, characteristics, and surprising abilities (-A flea can jump 30,000 times nonstop-). The bugs reappear in Calle-s comics, which are filled with science-based gags and one-liners. -Ah, food!... Oh no, wait, that-s just me,- says a centipede looking at its own tail, after readers learn that the arthropods -don-t mind a bit of cannibalism.- It-s an irreverent but informative introduction to some impressive specimens that slither, creep, crawl, and bite. Simultaneously available: Extraordinary Insects, Flying Creepy Crawlies, and Deadly Spiders. Ages 3-6. (Jan.)