The Girl Who Loves Bugs
- 4+
Written by Lily Murray
Illustrated by Jenny Lovlie
Loves and Interests
Bugs and insects
The garden
Review
Is your child fascinated with bugs and insects?
This beautifully illustrated and worded book doesn’t disappoint. The colourful flower beds invite you in to explore and discover Evie’s passion and love for bugs and insects!
The Girl Who Loves Bugs encourages readers to embrace their curiosity and interests. It’s one for the insect enthusiasts out there, just like the main character Evie.
Evie prefers to search under logs and examine trails for snails, ladybugs, crickets and other little critters. Fed up with being hurried along, she comes up with the idea to bring her bugs and insects inside the house. What could possibly go wrong?
What’s more, her extended family are coming over for lunch, including her Great-Gran! When they arrive the next day, Evie notices that her bugs and insects have escaped. They are all over the house. What will her Great-Gran say?
This book encourages following your passions and interests. It is full of descriptive vocabulary, rhyme and detailed artwork that provides opportunities for modelling language and talking about all things related to bugs and insects!
Themes and Representation
- – Celebrating exploration, curiosity and passions
- – Bugs and insects
- – Gardens and nature
- – Celebrating women
- – Blended family
- – LGBTQIA+ parents
Speech, Language and Communication Areas
Explore speech, language and communication targets that you could include in your book reading time. Start with selecting 1-2 targets that you would like to focus on and model the chosen targets while looking through the book together.
If your child is interested in particular bugs and insects, a picture or they comment or ask questions, follow their lead by acknowledging their communication, pausing and making your own comments. If the text is a bit lengthy, talk about and describe the pictures instead of reading the book word for word.
- Areas are ordered as follows:
- – Stage 1 Gestalt Language Examples
- – Language Areas (including vocabulary, early concepts, and early grammar)
- – Higher Level Language and Questions (including prediction, inferencing, problem-solving, explaining and justifying)
- – Speech Sound Targets
- – Story Elements
- – Early Literacy Areas
Stage 1 Gestalt Language Examples
Use the pictures in the book to guide you rather than reading it word for word. These are some examples of stage 1 gestalts that you could model with your child if they are a gestalt language learner.
While these are examples of mitigable gestalts, they are not a “one size fits all”. Gestalts (i.e., chunks of language or scripts) should be chosen based on your child’s interests and what’s useful and meaningful for them.
- – Let’s read this book
- – I love bugs
- – Oh no, they’re everywhere!
- – I wanna find bugs
- – Look at this!
- – It’s my favourite
Language Areas
These examples of language areas are helpful for analytic language learners and gestalt language learners that are at Stages 3-6. Again, these are examples of areas you could focus on with your child.
Vocabulary
- – Categories: insects/bugs/critters
- – Bugs: spiders, butterflies, lacewings, moths, crickets, snails, woodlice, slugs, beetles
- – Simple action words: love, showing, find, see, take, stay, leave, look, touch, catch, call, eat
- – Mental and motive words: want, thinks, dream
- – Fancier action words: munching, fetches, collecting, piling, famished, ignore, twitch, fidget, loose, leaps, covered, explain, drawls, escaped, studied
- – Descriptive words: beautiful, plump, slimy, quickly, quietly, fierce, amazing
- – Figurative: “after my very own heart”
Early Concepts
- – Emotions: disgusting, scary, happy, shocked, proud, love
- – Location words: under, next to, into, up, in, down, through, on
- – Descriptive: tall, little, dirty, dark
- – Quantitative: all, many, none, plenty, full
- – Negation: don’t, can’t
Grammar
- – Present tense verbs: filing, showing, smiling
- – Past tense (regular and irregular): famished, covered, escaped, brought
- – Plurals: bugs, crickets, snails
- – Pronouns: her, they, me, them, it, I
- – Adverbs: quickly, quietly, nicely
- – Adjective: see descriptive words above
- – Conjunctions: but, then, and, before
- – Contractions: I’ll, I’m, it’s, I’ve, can’t
Higher Level Language and Questions
Be mindful of not asking too many questions and meeting your child at their language level. Asking too many questions or placing high demands on your child such as “say [item]” stifles interactions and enjoyment. Instead, model the answers to questions.
Make Prediction
- – What might happen next?
- – What would happen if there were bugs in your house?
- – What would your mum and/or dad say?
Inferring meaning from pictures
- – What are Evie’s mums thinking?
- – How does Evie’s family feel?
Explaining and Justifying
- – How do you know Evie’s mum is scared?
- – Why is it not a good idea to bring the insects into the house?
Problem-solving
- – Who can she ask for help?
- – What could Evie do?
- – How will she get all the insects?
Speech Sound Targets
Pick 1 of the speech sound targets below and ask your child to listen for the particular sound while you talk about the book together. There is no pressure for your child to say the words if they don’t want to. The focus is on developing their attention to the chosen speech sound. The examples below target speech sounds at the beginning of words.
- – g: girl, getting, go, galore, goodness
- – k: come, cocoons, keep, collecting, curious cupboard, cosy, call, kind, covered, catch
- – sh: showing, shine, shock
- – j: jam, jar
- – f: fat, filling, find, family, fetches, feels, fierce, face, follow, found, famished, full, fidget, five
- – w: weaving, way, want, worst, worms, wide, woodlice, weevils, whispers, whirring, what, wink, wonders
- – s: searching, see, socks, sound, seat, Sophia, salad, suggests, sigh
- – z: zoo
- – l: loves, lacewings, leaf, larvae, leave, look, light, lunch, let’s, loose, leaps, laugh
- – r: room
- – s clusters: sky, snails, slimy, scary, squirm, stay, stop, start, smiles, snug, slug, sweet, stands, starts, studied, star
- – other clusters: fly, floorboards, glistening, plump, trails, great-gran, place, critters
Story Areas
- – Setting: the garden, house, bugs and insects zoo
- – Characters: Evie, Evie’s family, Great-Gran, bugs and insects
- – Initiating event: Evie loves bugs and insects. She is fed up with being hurried along when she is exploring the flower beds
- – First plan and motivation: She wants to bring the bugs and insects inside the house
- – Attempt or action: She collects and hides her bugs and insects in her bedroom.
- – Consequence: The bugs and insects escape and her extended family has arrived for lunch.
- – Resolution: They make a critter zoo
Early Literacy Areas
- Rhyming: sky/fly, trails/snails, broom/room, books/nooks
- Words in different-sized fronts to point out
Book details: Published by Macmillan’s Children’s Books
ISBN: 10 – 1529048044
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