I Eat Poop

Discussion questions

• Why was Dougie worried that the other bugs would make fun of him if they found out he ate poop?

• Why was Dougie able to stop Ronald from wrecking the classroom when he started rolling?

• What is the moral or lesson of this story?

• Which bug fact surprised you the most?

Vocabulary

• Outcast: (noun)
  A person who has been purposefully left out of their social group.
  “If everyone found out I eat poop, I’d be an outcast!”
  Dougie is worried that if his friends find out about his eating choices, they won’t want to hang out with him or play with him anymore.
  
  

• Inhabitable: (adjective)
  Good to live in.
  “He says we help process waste and make the earth more inhabitable.”
  Dougie’s dad reminds him that dung beetles help clean up poop and make earth more pleasant for everyone. 

Video content

• This dung beetle steers a large dung ball with difficulty. This video also briefly mentions that dung beetles use the position of the sun to find their way. (1:14) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjymt6oCcQ

• A relatively boring video with no narration shows how a beetle first chews out a round chunk of dung and begins to form it into a ball to roll. (3:54) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6iVDTdegH8

• Two dung beetles fight over a dung ball. The narration is a little difficult to hear/understand, but you could narrate over it. The narrator points out that it’s often easier for the dung beetle to steal the ball of another beetle than to take the time to create their own ball. (content is 2:17) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7-APvaPdbk

• TEDEd animated video describing dung beetles, their life, and their role in the environment. This video starts with a mildly inappropriate joke (A dung beetle walks into a bar. “Is this stool taken?”). You could clip this out using VideoLink if you wanted to:  https://video.link/ (4:57) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSTNyHkde08 

Publisher content 

• Book website from the publisher: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250785633/ieatpoop

• Publisher’s activity guide: https://images.macmillan.com/folio-assets/activity-guides/9781250785633AG.pdf 

Activities

• Explore food shaming: Dougie feels shame for the food he and his family eat. Using insects to unpack this topic is useful, but it may bring up experiences or emotions for kids who have experienced the reality of this in the cafeteria. This website has a lot of information about the racist stereotyping that Asian-American Pacific Islanders specifically experience around food in America. There are ideas of companion texts and scripts to follow to help guide you through this discussion: https://booksforlittles.com/orientalism-food-shaming/

• Design your own bug. Make sure that it has all of the parts of an insect (head, thorax, abdomen) and celebrate diversity by coming up with unique facts about your invented insect. Extend this activity by creating pictures or sculptures of your bugs.

• Jump into the world of insect research: find out facts about all of the bugs listed in the books. This could be an opportunity to highlight the insect nonfiction in your library’s collection or to dive into insect research using Gale In Context: Elementary or your favorite online database or EPIC book collection.

Companion books