Spiders by Nic Bishop

Spiders by Nic Bishop is a scholastic reader in which won the Robert F. Sibert Honor. The book is filled with close up detailed images of spiders in their natural habitat that are freaky but certainly amazing. The book teaches the reader about not only the different types of spiders but the different characteristics they have in common or are unique by. Each page has a different fact and characteristic on it to be discussed and is displayed with a different species of spider on each page. Did you know there are more than 38,000 types of spiders? By the end of the book, the reader is exposed to more than twenty different spiders and made knowledgeable of more than twenty five facts about spiders. With almost all non fiction selections, this book can be used for children to do research papers and projects on. The quality of the images are stunning as they trap in the characteristic discussed while showing the true beauty (scariness) of the spider species. The book goes over the different types, different shapes, different diets, different homes, and different feeding techniques of different spiders. I believe this book would be great for young students who are fascinated with bugs and insects, or those who are assigned a research paper on the topic of spiders. I would refrain from reading this out loud in the class because some students are terrified of spiders and their terror can be an unwanted distraction to the rest of the class.