Allen M. Young
The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2000
217 pp., price unknown
ISBN 0-299-16960-X (cloth)
ISBN 0-299-16964-2 (paper)

This book is a collection of gently written essays by a great storyteller and entomologist, Allen M. Young. Young has been writing on natural history for many years in the Chicago Tribune and other nationally recognized magazines. Small Creatures and Ordinary Places is a collection of published and unpublished essays about nature. Young has written about nature throughout the world, especially the tropics, in essays and books such as The Chocolate Tree, Sarapiqui Chronicle, and Lives Intertwined. His new book is about insects and other small creatures set in the landscape of midwestern United States, specifically in the Great Lakes region and more specifically in his backyard.

Small Creatures and Ordinary Places is divided neatly into four parts: spring, summer, winter, and autumn. Young takes us to a world that is often missed in our hectic everyday lives and encourages us to look down and around and become aware again of the small creatures on this planet that we knew better when we were children. Being raised in the Midwest and being an entomologist, I can attest to the accuracy of Young’s observations, be they entomological or nostalgic. He captures exactly the feel of all four Midwestern seasons. Keen observations and poetic descriptions are the hallmark of these essays. Living now in the South away from the capricious variations of the seasons, I cannot but be moved by descriptions of winter thaw and autumn colors. But Young sees each northern season as more than an opportunity to describe nature’s outward beauty. He muses about each as a metaphor for life: "birth, growth, harvest, death." He also convincingly highlights the importance of the smallest of creatures for our planet’s ecology.

The author picks his favorite characters to represent each season. In the spring, it is mourningcloaks and spring peepers. In summer, the monarch, cicadas, paper wasps, fireflies, bats, and dragonflies. In the autumn it is katydids. In the winter it is cocoons. The landscapes are forests, meadows, and cornfields.

He describes ecosystems from fleeting pools to those with the great ecological longevity of royal oaks. His descriptions are a result of years of studies and are decorated with scientific explanations, which make his essays informative for readers interested in natural history. They should also appeal to those simply interested in a walk in a forest or meadow or in quiet contemplation in one’s backyard.

The small creatures described within are part of our childhood memories. What spring would be complete without the songs of the spring peepers or what summer without the screech of the annual cicadas, the toil of the paper wasp, or a firefly meadow. How sad it would be not to see a monarch butterfly every summer. Which of these memories is in danger? What can we do to protect them? Young reawakens our wonder of small creatures and asks it not be passive.

Abelardo C. Moncayo, Ph.D.
Center for Tropical Diseases
Department of Pathology
University of Texas Medical Branch
Galveston, TX 77555-0609
E-mail: acmoncay@utmb.edu
American Entomologist
Vol. 47, No.3, Fall 2001