Blood, Bones, and Bugs

Donna Jackson transports readers to a morgue, a ricket-spiting contest (yuck!), and the Costa Rican rain forests in her latest book, The Bug Scientists (Houghton, 2002). Jackson, a superb writer of juvenile nonfiction, has an unerring ability to find fascinating, thought-provoking angles on subjects that kids find irresistible. Her popular sciencebooks, geared for readers in grades four through eight, are favorites with librarians and make exciting springboards for booktalks.

Ask your audience what bug scientists study. Everyone, of course, will shout, "Bugs!," but kids will be surprised at the diverse occupations detailed in The Bug Scientists. There's Valerie Cervenka, a forensic entomologist who studies insects in order to help solve crimes. She can determine the precise time of death by examining the developmental stage of insects that feed on the cadaver. Another bug expert, Steven Kutcher, "directs" insects that appear in movies such as Jurassic Park. Professor Tom Turpin—pictured on the bookcover with two large creepy-crawlers ambulating across his face—teaches insectology at Purdue University and conducts a popular cockroach race at an annual Bug Bowl. Share with kids Turpin's special recipe; perhaps they'll want to whip up their own batch of Chocolate Chirpy Chip Cookies!

Jackson's The Wildlife Detectives: How Forensic Scientists Fight Crimes Against Nature (Houghton, 2000) describes a real-life quest to solve a mystery. As the author reminds us, many endangered animals are nearing extinction because hunters kill them for their valuable body parts. A tiger skin may fetch $10,000, while a rack of elk antlers can bring $8,000. Charger, an impressive elk who frequently posed for pictures in Yellowstone Park, was found shot to death, his antlers viciously removed. Show your audience the photograph taken of Charger the day before his body was found. A team of scientists worked to find the elk's killer. How the criminal was eventually discovered and punished makes for fascinating reading.

In Jackson's world, people are forever stumbling across bodies and bones. In The Bone Detectives: How Forensic Anthropologists Solve Crimes and Uncover Mysteries of the Dead (Little, Brown, 1996), a Missouri man happened upon a skull in a Boy Scouts camp. After he informed local police, investigators were dispatched to the site and sifted through the dirt, discovering more bones and evidence, including a curious button with a single word: "Texwood." A specialist was able to reconstruct an image of the victim's head (shown on page 35 of the book) from information gleaned from examining the skull. Anthropologists also determined from the remains the victim's gender (female), her approximate age, the fact that she had given birth, and that she was Asian. An image of the reconstructed face was published in the newspaper.

The picture prompted calls to the police from concerned friends of a missing woman. They had not seen her for some time; her husband told them that she had moved back to her native country, Thailand. But the anthropological evidence pointed to a more sinister scenario. Moreover, Texwood was found to be a brand of jeans made in Thailand. Can your booktalk audience deduce what happened to the missing woman?

Jackson's Bone Detectives also presents other compelling cases, including the discoveries of the three-million-year-old fossil skull of "Lucy." In an amazing bit of scientific detective work, investigators examining the battlefield of Little Big Horn found the bones of Mitch Boyer, the half-Native American scout of General George Custer.

What lies buried in the backyards of your booktalk listeners? Insects? Animal teeth? Bones? A mere square foot of dirt contains mysteries just waiting to be explored. Jackson's enticing, attractive books will inspire budding scientists to look at our world—and the ground—with a new perspective.