Christmas books : The creepies …

Fit to bust with facts to fascinate a curious child, Wings, Stings and Wriggly Things by Martin Jenkins (Walker Books, £7.99, ISBN 0 7445 2874 7) makes a virtue of the bizarre. Did you know that butterflies have tastebuds in their feet, that snails are partial to a snack of soggy cardboard, and that crickets have ears in their stomachs? These questions are dotted through the text like a memory exercise. But the answers only turn up on the last page, when the show is over—which is a bit frustrating.