The Spider by Sabrina Crewe, a book review

Apparently, all spiders are black widows and all spiders have exactly the same life cycle and treat their young exactly the same way. At least, that's the way this children's book approaches things.

If The Spider were titled The Black Widow, or if it mentioned on the first page that it was talking about black widows and only black widows, I might give it a higher rating.  As it is, Crewe doesn't mention until near the end that "Oh, yes, this book is about black widows" and never mentions that other spiders might be different. Verdict? Give it a miss. There are much better books out there.

Daddy Longlegs Spiders by Jill C. Wheeler

I was attracted to this series because it talks of  individual spider species rather than lumping all spiders together in one, big, undifferentiated mass.  I've read Daddy Longlegs Spiders, Hobo Spiders, and Crab Spiders, all by Jill C. Wheeler, and that remains the series' chief virtue. It is good to see a series of books that recognizes that not all spiders are the same and that realizes that children can cope with this fact.

Otherwise, I'd rate the three as ok. Not great, not awful, ok. The pictures are good and might be useful to a reader of any age who is trying to learn to identify spiders.

I can't tell what age group the text is aimed at. The books are all written in short, declarative sentences which set up a rather monotonous mental rhythm (I would not like to try reading them out loud), but there doesn't seem to be any particular care with the vocabulary; I'd say they have more than their fair share of "long words."

Probably worth checking out in a bag load of library books, but not really worth hunting for unless you've a young spider enthusiast waiting for them.

The World of The Spider by Adrienne Mason

The World of the spider is a large book with plenty of space for photographs, and there are some lovely photographs, and Mason's text is brisk, informative, and to the point.

And... having said that, I'm stuck for anything else to say, even shortly after finishing it. It's a nice, informative book, but there's little to make it stand out one way or the other in a world full of nice, informative books.  It's got good photographs, but not the stunningly memorable ones found in, say, Nic Bishop's Spiders.  Flipping through it now, only Dwight Kuhn's picture of a jumping spider in mid-jump makes me pause for a second look.

So. there you have it: An unmemorable review of an unmemorable book. I'm not sorry I checked it out of the library, I'm also not sorry to return it.