Reading Rockets offers a wealth of reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better. Our reading resources assist parents, teachers, and other educators in helping struggling readers build fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.

Books by Theme

Bugs

They’re often odd looking, sometimes scary. They wiggle, squirm, scutter, creep, and crawl. They outnumber humans by the millions. What are these creatures who have lived since the time of the dinosaurs? Bugs! Read about these fascinating creatures in fact and fiction, music and poetry, and laugh and learn as they slip, skulk, or speed across the pages of these recommended books for kids ages 0-9.

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Ace Lacewing Bug Detective
Ace Lacewing Bug Detective
By: David Biedrzycki
Age Level: 6-9
Reading Level: Independent Reader

Ace Lacewing – whose business is bad bugs – narrates the saga of how he and his trusty sidekick and girlfriend foil the plot to overturn Queenie Bee. The exaggerated illustrations combine with staccato, pun-filled language to create this funny parody of detective stories.

Beetle Bop
Beetle Bop
By: Denise Fleming
Age Level: 3-6
Reading Level: Beginning Reader

Beetles come in many shapes and sizes — revealed in rhyming text and luminous illustrations. Readers will enjoy the dynamic interplay of words and pictures in this lively book.

Eddie's Garden and How to Make Things Grow
Eddie's Garden and How to Make Things Grow
By: Sarah Garland
Age Level: 3-6
Reading Level: Beginning Reader

The garden that Eddie and his Mum plant while his younger sister “helps” grows in the warm earth with the help of sun, rain, and beneficial creatures like worms. Eddie learns that other creatures, like slugs, eat plants. This gentle, engaging family story informs and illuminates many aspects of gardening.

Happy Bees
Happy Bees
By: Arthur Yorinks
Age Level: 3-6
Reading Level: Beginning Reader

Bumbling bees are oblivious to the confusion and downright unhappiness they create as they cheerfully cavort and fly around people and animals. The bees’ antics are captured in lighthearted illustrations. A CD of bee tunes with lyrics is included.

Insectlopedia
Insectlopedia
By: Douglas Florian
Age Level: 3-6
Reading Level: Beginning Reader

Fact and imagination come together in poems and pictures for a lively and memorable exploration of insects. Handsome illustrations, puns, and wordplay introduce the preying mantis, Black Widow spider, whirligig beetle, and other bugs in this clever, highly original collection.

Itsy Bitsy the Smart Spider
Itsy Bitsy the Smart Spider
By: Charise Mericle Harper
Age Level: 0-3
Reading Level: Beginning Reader

When the spider is washed out, she uses her brain to avoid getting wet again. She obtains a job catching fleas in a dog’s store and buys an umbrella before returning to the spout. Readers will not only laugh at this take-off of the popular tune, but just may create their own version!

Miss Spider's Family Album
Miss Spider's Family Album
By: David Kirk
Age Level: 0-3
Reading Level: Pre-Reader

Pictures of Miss Spider's family are presented in an album format on sturdy pages. The Sunny Patch characters continue to engage young children as they learn about family relations.

Mosquito Bite
Mosquito Bite
By: Alexandra Siy & Dennis Kunkel
Age Level: 6-9
Reading Level: Independent Reader

Two children play hide and seek outdoors on a warm night. Little do they know that a culex, a newly matured mosquito, is also looking for them. Bordered, color photographs taken with an electron microscope are inserted on black and white photographs of the playing children. Additional information about mosquitoes, micrographs, and more is appended in this fascinating and informative book.

Spiders and Their Webs
Spiders and Their Webs
By: Darlyne Murawski
Age Level: 6-9
Reading Level: Independent Reader

A biologist introduces spiders and their webs through stunning full color close-up photographs and a lively text. Spider facts include the arachnids’ common and scientific names, size, where they live, and what they eat. A technique to find webs and additional sources of information conclude this handsome volume.

Ten Little Sleepyheads
Ten Little Sleepyheads
By: Elizabeth Provost
Age Level: 0-3
Reading Level: Pre-Reader

From ten to one, little sleepyheads in colorful night clothes count down to sleep; that is, all but one bug who is not sleepy at all. And so begins the countdown again. Actual insects upon which the comical illustrations are drawn are shown and labeled on the end pages.

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