"Poppy the beetle like to sing all day. Did her sining save Harry the mouse?" --Back cover.

Cricka crick, cricka crick! This is the song papa crickets sing when they rub their wings together. Follow along as wingless baby crickets grow into singing adults.

Read Along or Enhanced eBook: Beetles from A to Z are crawling all over this book. From the Dung Beetle to the Kalahari Beetle, these critters live all over the world. Jerry Pallotta's twentieth alphabet book is brimming with facts and his signature humor.

Beginning in the late 1980s, a series of improbable bark beetle outbreaks unsettled iconic forests and communities across western North America. An insect the size of a rice kernel eventually killed more than 30 billion pine and spruce trees from Alaska to New Mexico. Often appearing in masses larger than schools of killer whales, the beetles engineered one of the world's greatest forest die-offs since the deforestation of Europe by peasants between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The beetle didn't act alone. Misguided science, out-of-control logging, bad public policy, and a hundred years of fire suppression created a volatile geography that released the world's oldest forest manager from all natural constraints. Like most human empires, the beetles exploded wildly and then crashed, leaving in their wake grieving landowners, humbled scientists, hungry animals, and altered watersheds. Although climate change triggered this complex event, human arrogance assuredly set the table. With little warning, an ancient insect pointedly exposed the frailty of seemingly stable manmade landscapes. Drawing on first-hand accounts from entomologists, botanists, foresters, and rural residents, award-winning journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, investigates this unprecedented beetle plague, its startling implications, and the lessons it holds.

Analyzes the role of insects in teaching humans about music, tracing research into exotic insect markets and research labs while explaining how insect sound and movement patterns inspired traditions in rhythm, synchronization, and dance.