City of Leafcutter Ants: A Sustainable Society of Millions

by Amy Hevron

Overview

Tunnel under the rainforest floor into the bustling metropolis of the leafcutter ants, each with a different job to do.

Leafcutter ants are masters at building and running their city. With a population to rival NYC, they employ builders, farmers, nannies, cleaners, and even pharmacists! Brave foragers venture into the trees to bring back slices of leaf to keep the fungus crops growing, while those at home expand the city’s tunnel network and tend to the young—and the queen, the city’s founder.

Whether already fascinated by bugs or just discovering them, young readers will be captivated by Amy Hevron’s colorful, inviting illustrations and accessible language. The City of Leafcutter Ants is both informative and fun, robustly researched and approachable, with backmatter for further learning. In walking us through this sprawling ant society, Hevron reminds us that as different as we may feel from a tiny six-legged insect, humans are neither the only nor the first creatures of Earth to organize ourselves into ingenious collective living.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823453184
Publisher:	Holiday House
Publication date:	06/25/2024
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	597,988
Product dimensions:	10.35(w) x 10.26(h) x 0.37(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Amy Hevron is an illustrator, designer and children’s book author. She wrote and illustrated The Longest Journey: an Arctic Tern’s Migration and Dust Bunny Wants a Friend. She also illustrated Trevor by Jim Averbeck, which received multiple starred reviews, and The Tide Pool Waits, by Candace Fleming. In both 2015 and 2016, she received the Portfolio Honor Award from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. She lives in Seattle with her family.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/25/2024

Via vivid prose, Hevron (The Longest Journey) introduces the leafcutter ants of Central America’s tropical forests, beings whose highly organized social structure supports millions of inhabitants. Readers begin by viewing a parade of tiny insects carrying leaf fragments aboveground; the events that unfold in their networks of underground passages, shown in cutaway views, are just as fascinating. In lime greens and earth tones, graphic-style close-ups use simple, cutout-style shapes and expressive lines to show the ants at work. Leafcutter farmers “chew the leaf cuttings into a paste and feed it to a fungus garden”—fungus brought to the colony by its queen at its inception. This food sustains the population of eight million differentiated insects: caretakers that nurture the colony’s larvae and queen, pharmacists that make antibiotics from their own bodies to keep disease at bay, soldiers that repel an intruding frog, and more. At last, taking a few of the nest’s fungal threads with her, a new queen leaves the community to start another. Throughout this work that compares the colony to New York City in size and complexity, engaging descriptions (“Bystanders zig, zag.... Haulers skitter, scatter”) make readers feel its industry and complexity. More about the species concludes. Ages 4–8. Agent: Kirsten Hall, Catbird Productions. (June)

Publishers Weekly

★ "The pacing and structure are impeccable, while the information is deftly conveyed. . . A fascinating introduction to an amazing insect."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

★ "An enormously entertaining introduction to small-scale subject."—Booklist, Starred Review

★ "Vivid prose. . ."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"A fantastic addition to any library collection, this is a must-read for a child with any interest in nature, bugs, and how the world works."—School Library Journal

"Immediately accessible . . . Follow this storytime offering with a dynamic rendition of The Ants Going Marching."—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
 
"Textured, brightly colored illustrations."—The Horn Book

From the Publisher

★ 06/21/2024

PreS-Gr 3—Inspired by the world of leafcutter ants in the rainforests of Central and South America, Hevron vividly renders a fascinating, fact-based story about these industrious insects. Leafcutter ants, not unlike humans, carry out essential roles that allow their vast underground society to function. This is the story of a robust leafcutter ant society, the size of New York City, somewhere in Central America. An underground network of millions, it began when a young leafcutter ant queen who after mating, dug into the soil and created the society's first chamber. She laid eggs and—fast forward some years—the population boomed to eight million ants. There are foragers, waste management crews, farmers, soldiers, caretakers, pharmacists, and more. Every ant contributes to this thriving world and the larger rainforest ecosystem. Hevron's illustrations brilliantly support the text with rich, bold colors. City of Leafcutter Ants is well-paced for a book that is dense with interesting tidbits. Back matter includes a longer explication of the text, bibliography, further reading, a visual of ant jobs, and author's note. VERDICT A fantastic addition to any library collection, this is a must-read for a child with any interest in nature, bugs, and how the world works.—Jane Huh

School Library Journal

★ 2024-04-05
Bright collages dominated by rainforest greens depict an insect community of “eight million sisters working together.”

It begins, as all leafcutter ant nests do, with a single queen. The nest she establishes appears in cross-section as a sprawling network of round chambers connected by straight, crisscrossing tunnels. Within, red ants scurry about, performing the essential duties any large community requires of its citizens: They are “builders and soldiers, caretakers and cleaners, farmers and pharmacists, and foragers.” Hevron doesn’t attempt realistic depictions but neither does she anthropomorphize her subjects, instead gesturing at the physical differences within the community by showing their varying sizes. Her inspired text uses appropriate vocabulary, informing readers of the antibiotics the pharmacist ants produce, the pheromone the worker ants emit when threatened, and the mandibles the forager ants use to harvest bits of leaves. The pacing and structure are impeccable, while the information is deftly conveyed. Listeners learn early on of the fungus that the queen brings from her birth nest (“an essential ingredient for the new city’s survival”); after exploring the bustle of the city, the text returns to the fungus, informing little ones that “the garden that started from [it] now feeds the entire city of eight million.” Two pages of further information will help adults answer any questions the text might elicit.

A fascinating introduction to an amazing insect. (bibliography, further reading, author’s note) (Informational picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews