I misjudged this book. I judged it, not by its cover, but by its title, and assumed that this was going to mainly be a kid-level humor book, with a distant chance it was a riff on the poem by Wallace Stevens titled “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”
I was wrong. Because of the relationship between kids and bugs, and because it is about eating bugs, there is an element of humor to Sue Heavenrich’s book, and David Clark’s illustration underscore that: the tongue extending out of the frog’s mouth to zap a fly seems to pull so hard it distorts his body.
And there’s an element of poetry: the first lines on some pages rhyme, and the ways to eat flies are paired by rhyme, so #13, zapped, is followed by #13, wrapped, #11 waterbound by #10 underground, and so on.
But what this book is, mainly, is a nonfiction review of the different ways flies get eaten, what eats them, when, and in what context. This is flying, gulping, splashing way to teach kids more about science, and science on a level they might be able to observe directly and already be paying attention to. Heavenrich even includes nutritional information at the end, as well as a diagram explaining what parts of a fly are edible (and a reading list for the truly fly-fixated).
