Vroege RecensentenL. J. Ganser

Entomologist Justin O. Schmidt is on a mission. Some say it's a brave exploration, others shake their heads in disbelief. His goal? To compare the impacts of stinging insects on humans, mainly using himself as the gauge. In The Sting of the Wild, the colorful Dr. Schmidt takes us on a journey inside the lives of stinging insects, seeing the world through their eyes as well as his own. He explains how and why they attack and reveals the powerful punch they can deliver with a small venom gland and a "sting," the name for the apparatus that delivers the venom. We learn which insects are the worst to encounter and why some are barely worth considering. The Sting of the Wild includes the complete Schmidt Sting Pain Index. In addition to a numerical ranking of the agony of each of the eighty-three stings he's sampled so far (from below 1 to an excruciatingly painful 4), Schmidt describes them in prose worthy of a professional wine critic: "Looks deceive. Rich and full-bodied in appearance, but flavorless" and "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel."

Georgia Bragg’s How They Croaked thrilled young audiences and won a Best Book of the Year selection by Bank Street. The sequel, How They Choked offers listeners a collection of colossal blunders made by some of history’s most famous figures. Included in this informative, amusing work are eyebrow-raising missteps by people such as Queen Isabella, Magellan, and the man who commissioned the Titanic. (Nonfiction/Ages 10 and up) WARNING: Nobody’s Perfect; Get Used to It EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES. Sometimes epic failures even lead to super successes … Sometimes they become deep, dark secrets. But to fail is human; to laugh about it is an easy way to learn about the past. From Montezuma II’s mistaking an enemy conqueror for a god to Amelia Earhart’s “winging it” until she crashed, How They Choked knocks fourteen famous achievers off their pedestals to reveal the human side of history.