This is a book especially for whimsical students of all ages (yes, adults too) who delight in bugs.  It tells in witty poetry and shows in surreal art the life and activities underneath and around the garden from early spring until late fall.  There are distinct storylines in pictures for creatures that go from page to page.  The text emphasizes the activity of a particular creature on that page.  Kirkus Reviews says, “Cyrus (The Mousery, 2000, etc.) promises bugs and verses, and delivers plenty of both in this ground-level view of a vegetable garden's teeming residents. Depicting every creature from beetles, flies, snails, and spiders to the occasional snake ("Through the tangle, softly gliding, / Comes a long, long tummy sliding . . . ") or bird with delicious realism, he introduces such appealing characters as a confused young frog who wonders where his tail went, Mama Pitter-Patter-Pede with her "half a hundred legs," and a squad of industrious dung beetles: " 'Papa, O Papa Bug, what will we eat?' / 'It's gummy, it's yummy, it's dung! What a treat.' "

Kurt Cyrus has captured the activity of the insect world that seems like chaos to man but is orchestrated by each creature’s abilities and needs.  He depicts this activity by the way he writes the verse in the book.  The poems are untitled and each contributes to the whole understanding of this garden animal world.  Publisher’s Weekly says, “Poems appear without titles but have different narrators; occasionally, words loop around the pages like vines. But ample visual and verbal clues spell out distinct story lines and a temporal setting, progressing from summer to autumn.”   Kirkus Reviews says, “The poems are distinct but untitled, connected both by common characters and by such running jokes as a season-long snail race, and a string of woozy ants that bonk heads to communicate. With no sacrifice of legibility, the page design is inventive too, with poems and pictures ingeniously wrapped together and occasional lines of text snaking along stems or through ground litter.”

Kurt Cyrus’ artwork is no less innovative.  His use of surreal size and bright ocher colors shows the garden to be an exciting, energetic world.  Publisher’s Weekly says, “Bold, inventive artwork lends high spirits to Cyrus's (Slow Train to Oxmox) down-and-dirty view of a garden. Full-bleed pictures share the eye-popping scale and dimensionality of David Kirk's Miss Spider books, but the palette is realistic and the action reflects bug behavior.”  The pictures have so much activity a reader could spend hours studying them in order to see all of it.  Children that normally read only non-fiction will love this book.

This book is a boy’s delight. There is grossness and humor in it.  Publisher’s Weekly says, “Running gags include an overturned beetle who struggles to right himself; and ants who march along, shouting "BOINK" as they bump heads (a joke for budding entomologists who are aware that ants touch antennae to communicate). Many kids will like the gross-out factor in the attention paid to dung beetles as they feast; vegetables as they rot; bugs being consumed; etc.” 

Review of Oddhopper Opera: A Bug’s Garden of Verses in Kirkus Reviews. Available from:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=6Y4yQH8ADZ&isbn=0152022058&itm=1#REV. Accessed 3 October 2004

Review of Oddhopper Opera: A Bug’s Garden of Verses in Publisher’s Weekly. Available from:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=6Y4yQH8ADZ&isbn=0152022058&itm=1#REV. Accessed 3 October 2004