Ants Don't Wear Pants!: TOON Level 1 (TOON into Reading)

"With a light tone and engaging art, McCloskey has put together a book that will encourage both a love of reading and an excitement about discovering the natural world."

Kevin McCloskey uses a graphic novel format to introduce beginning biology to young scientists. He starts with some wordplay, the idiom "having ants in your pants," and from there dives down deep into the world of ants.

"What if we could shrink?" asks one of his characters. And she does just that for a magnified look at ant bodies. The rest of the book takes us up close and personal into the world of ants, how they live, how they work (farming and even milking other insects), how they navigate the world. Kids will be fascinated by what they learn.

One page features different kinds of ants, with names alone that are intriguing:

"Weaver

Honeypot

Crazy

Acorn

Bulldog

Big-head

Pavement

Fire

Ghost"

The next pages show how ants work together in surprisingly complex ways. And they have inventive defenses as well: "To protect their colony, exploding ants actually explode! POP! They cover their enemy in yellow goo."

With a light tone and engaging art, McCloskey has put together a book that will encourage both a love of reading and an excitement about discovering the natural world. That's a lot for one small package, kind of like ants themselves.