My son gave me this terrific pop-up book for my birthday, and I greatly enjoyed perusing it. Although written for inquisitive youngsters, it holds plenty of delights for adults as well.
The pop-ups are cleverly done and well constructed, and each page not only contains one or more detailed and lifelike bugs -- or in one case an entire wasp's nest -- but also a treasure trove of little flaps that can be pried up to reveal more details on various aspects of bugs' lives.
The page on "How Bugs Work," for example, has panels that open to disclose how bugs' breathing and circulation work, how they mate and reproduce, how their nerves and senses function, and how they eat and digest. These short explanations, though quite simplified, give the budding entomologist essential information.
The most spectacular pop-up is the final one, on the page entitled, "My Ultimate Bugs." It's of a fat-tailed scorpion, first in a pantheon of "ultra" bugs: it is the most poisonous, while the strongest is the Hercules Beetle - able to lift 800 times its body weight; the heaviest the Goliath Beetle, weighing as much as 3.5 ounces; and -- I have to say this delights me but I never wish to encounter it -- the loudest is the Dog-Day Cicada, whose alarm call "can reach over 100 decibels, which is louder than a chain saw and loud enough to damage your hearing."