"We humans are a minority of giants, stumbling around in the world of little things," Sue Hubbell writes in this marvelous book. Each of these little things "has a complicated and special way of getting on in the world, different from ours and different from one another's." In Waiting for Aphrodite she explores the ways of sponges and sea urchins, horseshoe crabs and the sea mouse known as Aphrodite -- as well as our ways. She takes us on a journey through the mysteries of time -- geological, biological, and personal -- as she writes of the evolution of life on this planet and the evolution of her own life: her childhood next to a Michigan graveyard; the three colleges where she "learned three things"; her twenty-five years keeping bees on a farm in the Ozarks; her move to a "strange little house" in a small Maine town, "the place I wanted to grow old in." And in the tide pools and ocean waters there she discovered a whole new world, the world of little things that inspired this book.

"In her new book, Hubbell becomes a Shakespeare of advocacy for some of the more ignored denizens of our complicated planet. For, she says, hath not a (millipede, earthworm, cricket, etc.) its own life, beaty, rightness and place in the scheme of things? Can't we see them, admire them, appreciate their simplicities and their complexities, marvel at their durability?- remembering, meanwhile, that we humans are, compared with many of them, the most insolent upstarts of evolution? Along the way in this engaging tribute, you find that you are being educated-by Hubbell of course, and by the array of dedicated scientists and partisans of each invertebrate she seeks out." Newsday

"Hubbell makes life more interesting." Nature

"From a tidal pool in Maine and rainforest treetops in Belize to the Missouri Ozarks, [Sue Hubbell] sees everything and speaks of it in words that blend passion and insight and wit and charm." Kansas City Star