WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE BUG?

A lively collection of illustrations of crawling, creeping, and flying creatures offers a look at the versatility of several well-known children’s artists.

As with What’s Your Favorite Animal? (2014) and What’s Your Favorite Color? (2017), Carle here showcases the work of 15 friends whose responses to the title question offer a wonderful range of styles, media, and palettes together with brief stories, poems, and comments. Multicolored dots on the green endpapers suggest caterpillar eggs on a leafy background. Each of the varied selection of arthropods within is presented in a contained but generous two-page spread. The creature selection goes beyond the title’s “favorite bugs” to include millipedes and a couple of spider species. Facts about each are spare or absent, but this is an art book rather than an informational work. Selections vary, including Kenard Pak’s graceful fireflies, Brendan Wenzel’s bright peacock spiders, and Eric Fan’s droll bowler-hatted, briefcase-toting worker bee. Ekua Holmes’ portrait of herself as a brown-skinned young girl observing the busy ants in her ant farm joins Carle’s humanoid butterfly-child on the cover and Carle himself disguised as a large and bearded Very Hungry Caterpillar (both the latter are white). Brief biographies introduce the artists; media and techniques aren’t disclosed.

A terrific prompt and conversation starter for young artists.