City of Leafcutter Ants: A Sustainable Society of Millions
by Amy Hevron (Author)
Leafcutter ants are masters at building and running their city. With a population to rival NYC, they employ builders, farmers, nannies, cleaners, and even pharmacists! Brave foragers venture into the trees to bring back slices of leaf to keep the fungus crops growing, while those at home expand the city’s tunnel network and tend to the young—and the queen, the city’s founder.
Whether already fascinated by bugs or just discovering them, young readers will be captivated by Amy Hevron’s colorful, inviting illustrations and accessible language. The City of Leafcutter Ants is both informative and fun, robustly researched and approachable, with backmatter for further learning. In walking us through this sprawling ant society, Hevron reminds us that as different as we may feel from a tiny six-legged insect, humans are neither the only nor the first creatures of Earth to organize ourselves into ingenious collective living.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
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Publishers Weekly
Via vivid prose, Hevron (The Longest Journey) introduces the leafcutter ants of Central America's tropical forests, beings whose highly organized social structure supports millions of inhabitants. Readers begin by viewing a parade of tiny insects carrying leaf fragments aboveground; the events that unfold in their networks of underground passages, shown in cutaway views, are just as fascinating. In lime greens and earth tones, graphic-style close-ups use simple, cutout-style shapes and expressive lines to show the ants at work. Leafcutter farmers "chew the leaf cuttings into a paste and feed it to a fungus garden"--fungus brought to the colony by its queen at its inception. This food sustains the population of eight million differentiated insects: caretakers that nurture the colony's larvae and queen, pharmacists that make antibiotics from their own bodies to keep disease at bay, soldiers that repel an intruding frog, and more. At last, taking a few of the nest's fungal threads with her, a new queen leaves the community to start another. Throughout this work that compares the colony to New York City in size and complexity, engaging descriptions ("Bystanders zig, zag.... Haulers skitter, scatter") make readers feel its industry and complexity. More about the species concludes. Ages 4-8. Agent: Kirsten Hall, Catbird Productions. (June)
Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.Kirkus
Review quotes
JNF003120 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Animals | Insects, Spiders, etc.
JNF051100 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Science & Nature | Environmental Science & Ecosystems
