Nonfiction Monday: The Ant's Nest

The Ant's Nest: A Huge, Underground City (Spectacular Animal Towns)
By Miriam Aronin
Ages 9-12, 32 pages
Bearport Publishing, 2009

Reviewed by Heidi Bee Roemer

Bio by Laura Crawford

Book Source: We would like to thank Thornton Public Library for providing a copy of this book for review.

Welcome to the ant city where, in many ways, insect life mirrors human life. Readers will discover that an ant’s nest is similar to a human city, or much like a house with a variety of rooms (chambers) used for different functions. There’s a nursery where young ants are tended to, a chamber for the Queen, chambers for storing food and for resting, and a place deep down in the earth, like a basement, where ants retire for the winter.
Simple text averaging 50 words per page informs readers that in the ant city, every ant has a job! Hundreds, thousands, or even millions of ants may live in one colony, so cooperating with one another is key. Aronin explains how ants communicate, their roles within the colony, habitats, body parts, and life cycles. Ants are found in deserts and rainforests—almost every part in the world except a few of its coldest regions. Brief profiles are offered of predators, herbivores, leaf-cutters, seed-harvesters, aphid-tenders, and fungus-growers. One sidebar notes that the total weight of all ants living on Earth is estimated to be greater than the combined weight of all humans. Wow!
An impressive amount of information about ant life is presented in this 32-page picture book. Irresistible larger-than life, full-color photos dominate each page. No squinting is necessary to see the small creatures; some enlargements result in ant images the size of my hand! You can clearly see the powerful biting jaws of a bull ant, a queen ant carrying a cluster of eggs in her mouth, and a life-and-death struggle between a ladybug and a dairy ant. Here’s a book that will help readers appreciate these diminutive, yet fascinating organisms. One of six in the series Spectacular Animal Towns, The Ant’s Nest provides maps, an Ant Colony fact page, glossary, bibliography, and additional print and online resources. Recommended by NSTA, 2010, (National Science Teachers Association).

For years. Miriam Aronin has been involved in various aspects of writing and publishing. She has been a teacher, a curriculum director, an editor, fact checker and a volunteer literacy instructor. In addition, she is an author of a variety of children’s book about animals and natural distasters. She also wrote the award winning book, Aye-Aye: An Evil Omen. The Ant's Nest is an NSTA recommended book for 2010.

This post is part of the Nonfiction Monday Round-Up hosted this week by Simply Science blog.