Ladybugs play an important role in our world as eco-friendly pest controllers and plant pollinators\u2014and they bring us good luck, according to lore. This Czech import opens as spring rolls in and a \u201cloveliness\u201d of seven-spot ladybugs wake from their winter slumber and stretch. One of them, Mariella, launches into an account of one year in the life of the species; our peppy guide points out their main body parts (elytra are the outer wings), notes where they like to live (everywhere except the polar regions), and covers the variety of ladybugs in the world, how they help humans\u2019 gardens (by eating aphids), and the ways they defend themselves (by emitting a bad smell). Sekaninov\u00e1 folds in facts through Mariella\u2019s cheery narration, discussing courtship, egg laying, hatching, and young ladybugs\u2019 subsequent pupation and metamorphosis, all of which spans roughly a year. In Dao\u2019s whimsical, heavily anthropomorphic illustrations, ladybugs roast aphids over a fire, push baby carriages, tussle over food, and settle into leaf hammocks for the night; with their dark faces, bright-red lips, and large eyes with prominent whites, some of these depictions inadvertently suggest racial stereotypes common throughout U.S. history. One spread called \u201cMiracle of Nature\u201d lays out the ladybug life cycle, each phase surrounded by a frame featuring joyous and quizzical insect faces, ideal for budding entomologists and garden aficionados.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ladybugs play an important role in our world as eco-friendly pest controllers and plant pollinators\u2014and they bring us good luck, according to lore. This Czech import opens as spring rolls in and a \u201cloveliness\u201d of seven-spot ladybugs wake from their winter slumber and stretch. One of them, Mariella, launches into an account of one year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6067"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}