It's a bit like picking a favorite child.

If you ask me to choose, I can't,

     because just look at these beauties! Dianna Aston and Sylvia Long team up to create books that hold a treasure of extensive collections. It's as if you open a box from an explorer that has traveled the world to build up a systematic survey of each topic. 

In a Beetle is Shy, the author draws the reader into the life cycle, not with a diagram, but with a feeling: A beetle is shy. She then describes the life cycle of a typical beetle (which is not easy to narrow down) and uses familiar words like "hard outer skin" to introduce "exoskeleton" and "cocoon-like" to introduce "pupa". She then blasts the reader with a full spread of a beetle collection.

The author then explores the strange and unique characteristics of beetles, including, iridescence (kaleidoscopic), size (colossal and microscopic), edibility (tasty, she spares readers the image here), adaptation function (digger, runner, hopper,  swimmer), communication (telegraphic), defense mechanisms (camouflage, poison, mimicry), relationship to people (helpful, harmful), historic (prehistoric), form leads to function (armored), then finally a fantastic last page (bold).

In an Egg is Quiet, the author immediately anthropomorphized eggs by placing them with their parent. 

    It sits there, 

under its mother's feathers,

on top of its father's feet,

buried beneath the sand. 

Warm. cozy.

Again in this book, she then overwhelmed the reader with a spread of more than 40 different colors and sizes of eggs on white background. It's again like a specially arranged collection. 

Next, the author digs down into measurement (great idea to add a ruler), color (and egg is artistic), sensory (textured, hard, soft, gooey, smooth, rough), history (fossilized), the life cycle of three organisms (giving).

The end hits movement: An egg is quiet, then, suddenly, an egg is noisy! (cheep, cheep, peep, crunch). There is familiarity with an egg turning into a bird, but the author extends that understanding to an egg turning into a caterpillar.

The final page is again, a comparison to front matter (egg collection). Children can flip and compare the egg with the organism that comes from it.

Alright, maybe I saved the best for last (shhh!!). In a Seed is Sleepy, Aston opens with a familiar organism (sunflower) in a less familiar setting (in a fully dried, and formed fluorescence, then on the ground). She talks about dormancy (a seed is secretive). She explains angiosperms, or flowering plants (a seed is fruitful). She moves on to gymnosperms (a seed is naked). She covers form (seeds come in many sizes)  and function (seeds are adventurous) and demonstrates how seeds are an adaptation for movement (a seed is inventive). 

She covers the life cycle of a plant (a seed is generous, thirsty, hungry) then a history of seeds (ancient). Finally, she anthropomorphized plants (seeds are clever) and then finished AGAIN by showing contrast and movement: 

A seed is sleepy (drooping sunflower seeds)

then a seed is,

AWAKE! (spectacular sunflowers)

Again at the end of this book, she lays out the organisms to compare to the beginning of the book.

Yeah, there is definitely a pattern to these books, and it works.