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Reviewed by:
  • Behold the Beautiful Dung Beetle by Cheryl Bardoe
  • Deborah Stevenson
Bardoe, Cheryl. Behold the Beautiful Dung Beetle; illus. by Alan Marks. Charlesbridge, 2014. 32p. Library ed. ISBN 978-1-58089-554-5 $16.95 Ad Gr. 2-3.

“Somewhere in the world right now an animal is lightening its load,” begins this informative and self-aware introduction to one of nature’s unsung ecological heroes. Bardoe describes the energetic rush of dung beetles just after an elephant has, um, provided for them, outlining the difference between dwellers (who “dig right in”), rollers (who roll dung balls away), and tunnelers (who dig down below the pile). The book also covers reproduction and growth stages and briefly notes the Egyptian celebration of the insects as scarabs. The book could use some more detail (it never states how big dung beetles can get, for instance, or how long they live), and the simple main text and more informative secondary texts aren’t well differentiated. It’s still a useful and lively overview, though, and it’s enhanced by Marks’ watercolor and pencil illustrations, which imbue the dung beetles’ world with vitality and imagination: clever cutaways revealing the underground world of the tunnelers are set against the backdrop of grasslands populated by trundling elephants and graceful giraffes. End matter offers brief information about how to find dung beetles, some additional facts, a glossary, and a short bibliography.

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