Voracious readers have often been called bookworms, a joke suggesting that, like the youngest readers, those with insatiable literary appetites might take a nibble of the printed page here and there. Even the small leaded weights used here to hold down book pages are sometimes affectionately known as "book worms." Paper and glue can prove irresistible to a variety of insects from worms, which create a trail of holes through several pages and sometimes covers, to silverfish, which graze on the surface of a page leaving multiple sets of holes. The natural philosopher Robert Hooke observed the latter peckish critter under a microscope as early as 1660: "This Animal probably feeds upon the Paper and covers of Books, and perforates in them several small round holes, finding, perhaps, a convenient nourishment in those husks of Hemp and Flax." The insect damage in the books on display occurred well before the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries acquired them, and stands as a testament to the lives of the volumes as objects subject to their environment. The wood-based paper of the cheaply-made Mexican chapbooks offered a more fibrous repast than the fabric content of the scrapbook pages; repeated hole patterns appeared when the insects chewed through a folded image. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, instead boasts intentionally die-cut holes in its pages showing the insect's path through various types of fruit. Eric Carle originally intended its protagonist to be a bookworm, an idea he had when he started playing idly with a hole punch, but his well-intentioned editor intervened.
- F. Placidus Sprenger. Scrapbook of devotional pictures. Banz, 1798. (Ryerson and Burnham Libraries)
- F. Placidus Sprenger. Scrapbook of devotional pictures. Banz, 1798. (Ryerson and Burnham Libraries)
- José Posada, et al. Collection of Mexican chapbooks. Mexico: Antonio Vanegas Arroya, 1880-1920. (Prints and Drawings)
- José Posada, et al. Collection of Mexican chapbooks. Mexico: Antonio Vanegas Arroya, 1880-1920. (Prints and Drawings)
- Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Children's Choice Book Club Edition, 1970s. (Private Collection)