ANTics by Dakota Douglas

The play on the word ANT is very clever. The ants live in InhabitANT. Inhabitants are HesitANT, EXUBERant, and BrilliANT, just to name a few.

The story is a fun adventure for children to read. The ants are very much alike families that deal with similar issues as human beings. In this story, the biggest challenge for the ants is foraging food for InhabitANT, without getting killed by humans, animals, or bullies in their own environment.

While the book is not age coded, and because of its length, children would appreciate the story if it included pictures. The cover page is very enticing and fun and young readers would expect to visualize each unique ant and ‘character’ in color.

An idea would be to break up the book into smaller stories. There are so many terrific adventures; one adventure a book would be more effective in holding a child’s attention.

There are several typos, which cannot occur in a child’s book.

ANTics is a subtle and fun way to teach children life’s lessons. The story is clever and well written. Pictures accompanying such a character rich story would be an enhancement.

Young readers will be entertained when they choose, ANTics by Dakota Douglas.