Snails

Like most other Crabtree series, the “What Lives in the Dirt?” books utilize two-page chapters, brief text, bolded words that are defined in a closing glossary and an index. Where these books depart from other Crabtree books is in the medium used for illustrating the text. Readers have come to expect the pages of Crabtree books to be brimming with coloured photos; however, the four “What Lives in the Dirt?” titles employ collage illustrations provided by Hannah Tolson.

Of the four books in the “What Lives in the Dirt?” series, Snails, while still a fun read, is a bit light in terms of hard facts. Unlike the other three books, there is no illustration that identifies the body parts of the book’s subject creature. Though Williams identifies that there are both land and water snails, she principally addresses the former and devotes significant text to explaining the role of the mucus that snails excrete as they move. Williams remarks on what snails eat, and what eats snails. Williams’ brief text also touches on the fact that snails have four tentacles.

Their eyes are on the end of the two longer tentacles on top.

Although snails can see blurry images, they can tell if it is light or dark.

The shorter, bottom tentacles are for smelling and touch.

In Snails>, unlike the other three books, Williams does not advance any positives about snails (not even as escargots), but she does make the neutral observation that “snails eat the juicy parts of plants such as the leaves, flowers, and stems.”

Following the book’s main text, readers are invited to “Watch snails close up!’ by “mak[ing] a home for snails and look[ing] after them for a week.” Williams provides a list of what readers will need in order to build a snail home as well as step-by-step instructions on how to locate snails, construct their home, and provide the snails with food and moisture. She also provides tips to keep the snails safe, including not using tap water because of its chlorine content. Readers are reminded, “After a few days, put your snails back outside where you found them.”

Other end matter includes a page of “More amazing facts about snails”, a glossary and an index.

Tolson’s cartoon-like collages definitely give the books in the “What Lives in the Dirt?” series a more informal, almost storybook feel, one that will attract the younger end of the series’ audience range. Because snails are largely nocturnal, it is likely that many of the book’s readers have never seen one, and, if they have, they may have been turned off by the ick factor of the snail’s slimy mucus trail.