Do Fire Ants Fight Fires? How Animals Work in the Wild

It’s never too soon to engage the youngest readers with fascinating facts about animals. In Do Fire Ants Fight Fires? How Animals Work in the Wild, adaptation for defense and survival is the focus in a lighthearted treatment that will readily appeal to this target audience. The Q/A format—with simple questions about their ‘work’—will grab attention and initiate obvious responses before the text reveals various animals’ habits. The familiar job examples include garbage collection, farming, baking, delivery driver, teaching, building and babysitting, with animal choices to match in a tongue-in-cheek way. For instance, vultures do collect garbage in their role as scavengers; moles may not build subway tunnels, but they do dig their home tunnels quickly and efficiently; tapirs don’t deliver parcels, but they distribute seeds as they poop; weaverbirds build multifamily nests to compare with our apartment buildings.

Thirteen examples introduce readers to a broad cross-section of the animal world, including insects, spiders, fish, mammal, reptiles and birds. It’s enough to stimulate curiosity and wonder: what other interesting things do animals do? While some of the animals will be familiar, there’s opportunity to discover new or lesser-known species. This tightly focused subject matter works perfectly for early STEM learning. The book, in conjunction with other titles in the series, is appropriate as a read-aloud. The large, clear font will aid kids in independent reading and vocabulary building.

The double spreads with cartoon-style illustrations feature bold colour with plenty of animation to help readers imagine both the human job and how the animal behaves. The Q/A approach of Do Fire Ants Fight Fires? creates an interactive package. This style leads effectively to the question on the last page: What jobs do you have at home or at school? Using what they’ve seen in the animal examples, kids will have fun describing their own roles within their families, perhaps even imagining other animals’ jobs for comparison. It’s a fun way to learn about one aspect of nature. And the more kids know, the more likely they are to care about the natural world.