Wiggle and Waggle

by Caroline Arnold, Mary Peterson (Illustrator)

Overview

Follow Wiggle and Waggle, two wormy best friends, through five squirmy chapters for beginning readers! These pals work hard in the garden, digging tunnels to keep the soil healthy and give the vegetables room to grow. It's a tough job, but everything is easier with a good song—and a good friend. Of course, all work and no play makes for a dull worm. Wiggle and Waggle love to swim and make mud pies for picnic fun! 

Young worm fans will dig the simple science facts included at the end of this charming book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580893077
Publisher:	Charlesbridge
Publication date:	02/01/2009
Edition description:	New
Pages:	48
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.20(d)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Caroline Arnold is the award-winning author of more than one hundred and forty books for children, including WIGGLE AND WAGGLE, A WARMER WORLD, and TOO HOT? TOO COLD?: KEEPING BODY TEMPERATURE JUST RIGHT. She lives in Los Angles, California.

Editorial Reviews

The eponymous heroes of this early reader are two genial, googly-eyed earthworms who are also best friends. In five short chapters, Wiggle and Waggle (the latter, distinguished by a pair of glasses) learn that singing makes a job go faster; a difficult task—moving a big rock out of a tunnel—is made easier when individuals work together; and a rainy day needn’t be a spoiler if you have an upbeat outlook. Arnold’s (Super Swimmers) writing has an easygoing cadence and just the right amount of repetition (“They dug long tunnels, short tunnels, fat tunnels, and thin tunnels”), although her wrap-ups for each story can be fairly anticlimactic (after a day of singing and digging tunnels, Waggle muses, “We are a good team.... Let’s dig again tomorrow”). Peterson (No Time to Nap!) is all-around terrific, tightly cropping her environments to keep the action focused on her characters and conveying a sense of contrasting scale (an unharvested carrot dwarfs the two worms). As for the two leads themselves, they’re spunky, comically gangly and just vulnerable enough to be adorable. For youngsters smitten by this duo, a list of facts about worms and how they contribute to a healthy garden concludes this cheery collection.

—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

The eponymous heroes of this early reader are two genial, googly-eyed earthworms who are also best friends. In five short chapters, Wiggle and Waggle (the latter, distinguished by a pair of glasses) learn that singing makes a job go faster; a difficult task-moving a big rock out of a tunnel-is made easier when individuals work together; and a rainy day needn't be a spoiler if you have an upbeat outlook. Arnold's (Super Swimmers) writing has an easygoing cadence and just the right amount of repetition ("They dug long tunnels, short tunnels, fat tunnels, and thin tunnels"), although her wrap-ups for each story can be fairly anticlimactic (after a day of singing and digging tunnels, Waggle muses, "We are a good team.... Let's dig again tomorrow"). Peterson (No Time to Nap!) is all-around terrific, tightly cropping her environments to keep the action focused on her characters and conveying a sense of contrasting scale (an unharvested carrot dwarfs the two worms). As for the two leads themselves, they're spunky, comically gangly and just vulnerable enough to be adorable. For youngsters smitten by this duo, a list of facts about worms and how they contribute to a healthy garden concludes this cheery collection. Ages 5-8. (July)

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Publishers Weekly

PreS-Gr 3 In this beginning reader, two earthworms, one pink and the other tan, have five adventures gyrating through the garden. In the process, information about worms and how they help a garden grow is conveyed. To make their work more interesting, the worms sing a little ditty as they aerate the soil. They also have a picnic with dirt rolls, bug juice, and mud pies during a rainstorm. The simple illustrations enhance the humor and provide the graphic support that new readers need. This would be a wonderful companion to Doreen Cronin's Diary of a Worm (HarperCollins, 2003). The book concludes with "Fun Worm Facts" and "How Worms Help Plants Grow."-Elaine Lesh Morgan, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR

School Library Journal

Arnold, known for her science nonfiction, tucks plenty of natural history into this quintet of easy reading tales. Singing a work song-"We wiggle and waggle, squiggle and squirm. / Digging in dirt is the life of a worm"-two earthworms aerate a vegetable garden, work together to shift a rock out of the way, picnic beneath a bucket on dirt rolls and bug juice, play in a rain puddle and, finally, at summer's end, tunnel down for a long rest. Placing her worms in a well-tilled setting among healthy-looking veggies, Peterson endows them with smiles and goggle eyes, plus subtle differences in body color and, for Waggle, a pair of eyeglasses. An altogether agreeable visit to the garden, unsurprisingly capped by a page of additional worm facts. (Easy reader. 6-7)

Kirkus Reviews