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Small, Shiny Dung Beetle

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Book Synopsis

Follow a female dung beetle meeting her mate on a fresh pile of elephant poo, a common dating site for a dung beetle, and learn about its life cycle and the super-strength it takes to keep the planet tidy.

This book will feed the curiosity of the youngest of readers who are:

keen to know how the world works
fascinated by nature
enjoy learning new information
The story is carefully written for children learning to read, with additional factual captions for more advanced readers.

And here’s the WOW-factor – a large fold-out map of Africa at the end with diagrams and a fun I-Spy game to take children back into the book to find and identify animals in the pictures.

Our Review Panel says...

The story begins with a small, green dung beetle on a fresh pile of soft elephant poo. From here we see her form a small ball of poo which she seeks a mate to help her roll. Together they roll it to a soft patch of earth where they bury it. She lays an egg in the middle of the soft ball of poo. Then they start again until there are several buried balls of poo, each with an egg inside. The book then follows the life cycle of the dung beetle through all the stages until it hatches and then repeats the cycle itself.

This book is jam-packed with facts and information not just about the dung beetle but about the African Savannah and the animals who live there. The illustrations are beautiful with lots of elements for children to spot, aided by an eye-spy on the large, fold-out page at the end. The fold-out page also includes a map showing the distribution of dung beetles around the world and illustrates clearly the life-cycle of the beetle.

This book would be a beautiful addition to any classroom or school library. Valuable both as a reading for pleasure book as well as when teaching about Africa, animal life-cycles or food chains.