The Grouchy Ladybug

Author/Illustrator: Eric Carl

Genre: Fantasy

Grade Level: K-3

There were two ladybugs that flew onto a leaf. One was a nice ladybug and one was a grouchy ladybug. They both wanted to eat the same thing for breakfast. The nice ladybug suggested that they could share but the grouchy one did not want to share. He said he could fight him for them. The grouchy ladybug said that the friendly one was not big enough for him to fight and the friendly ladybug suggests that he finds someone bigger. He finds a yellow jacket and challenges him to a fight. The yellow jacket shows his stinger and the grouchy ladybug says he's not big enough. He runs into a beetle, praying mantis, sparrow, lobster, skunk, snake, hyena, gorilla, rhino, elephant, whale, and then eventually the whale smacks the ladybug back to where he began and the friendly ladybug shared the food with him.

This book includes time in it. This would be perfect to use on a lesson learning about time. It also teaches children valuable lessons about being prideful and rude. We could make paper clocks and draw each animal the ladybug encounters on each of the time stamps that it says.

The illustrations are just marvelous. It is the famous Eric Carle and his famous collage illustrations. The white space is ever so apparent making the colorful illustrations stand out. The different animals are on different sized flaps of pages as they get bigger.