Norwich-based artist and insect enthusiast Vanna Bartlett has spent three years painting, drawing and writing her personal illustrated alphabet of invertebrates. Her wonderful colour plates bring together moths, butterflies, bees, wasps, spiders, hoverflies, shieldbugs, grasshoppers, dragonflies, woodlice and many many more species. The book features 26 highly detailed full-colour plates drawn in ink and watercolour, featuring her personal A to Z of arthropods. The plates are accompanied by informative text and further illustrations, mainly in black and white, featuring close up studies of individual species. In all, the book depicts over 400 individual invertebrates, from more than 300 species.
The author has observed a remarkable number of these mini-beasts in her own Norwich garden, designed and managed to maximise wildlife. Arthropedia: An Illustrated Alphabet of Invertebrates is not a field guide, but the author's personal celebration of the rich diversity of life that sits towards the bottom of the food chain, wisely described as the little things that make the world work.