Small
Creatures and Ordinary Places
Essays
on Nature
Allen
M. Young
Illustrated by Judith Huf
Observations on the flicker of fireflies,
springs full of frog song, Monarch butterflies in a patch of
purple coneflowers
Small Creatures and Ordinary
Places reveals to us the beauty
and value of hornets, bats, katydids, mice, cicadas, and other
tiny dwellers in our own backyards. Young, a renowned expert
on butterflies and cicadas of the American tropics, records in
these charming essays his keen observations of the natural world
as he walks through an urban woods near the Lake Michigan shore,
or sits on his deck facing his backyard, or gazes at a field
of corn stubble in autumn. He invites us to venture into our
own yards, neighborhood parks, fields, and forests and pause
there . . . to look and to listen.
Small creatures
have unique and interesting stories to tell us, Young points
out. Their brief life cycles illustrate the intricate workings
of a bigger clock driving the seasons, and they dominate the
larger web of life in which humans are but a strand. Far too
often they are ignored, taken for granted, reviled, or misunderstood.
Even now, Young writes, as we move into a new millennium as a
species and the technological pace of our existence further quickens,
we can gain much from appreciating nature close at hand, despite
how steadily it is being pushed aside.
Allen M.
Young is curator of zoology and vice president of collections, research,
and public programs at the Milwaukee Public Museum. His essays
on nature have appeared in the Chicago Tribune Magazine, Milwaukee Journal, Miami Herald, Wall Street Journal, Chicago
Sun-Times, and Wisconsin Natural Resources. He is
the author of several books on the natural history of the tropics,
including The Chocolate Tree, Sarapiqui Chronicle, and Lives Intertwined. He also prepared a revised edition
of the Golden Guide to Insects, a book that in an earlier
edition inspired his boyhood fascination with the life cycles
of insects.
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November 2000
288 pp.
6 x 9
28 pen and ink line drawings
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