Because of a Bee: Nonfiction For Every Age

 The recent release of a new nonfiction picture book by Lola M. Schaefer, BECAUSE OF A BEE, is a genuine joy. I've reviewed several of Schaefer's  picture books in the past, including an interview with the author HERE. 

Chronicle Books, 2026

Illustrated by Franci Sanna, this simple but intense and vibrantly colored presentation is produced in user-friendly square size with sturdy and clever cut-off elements that contribute to a broader sense of how each element of this natural chain of life interacts and is interdependent on the others.

We are in the midst of deepest bee season, while pollen, nectar, and blossoms are in abundance. The seemingly simple text takes readers on a cause/effect journey from bee to berry to butterfly to ... celery? hummingbird?   aphids and avocados? 

Through oversized and intriguing images, even the youngest can search out the mysteries of these connections and more, with the added asset of an author note in back to further explain the various roles of pollinator, insect hosts, and food chains, closing with a full circle moment back to bees. The final double spread in the main story is a feast, a celebration of the remarkable foods we enjoy, all because of bees. The slightly abstract and overlaid images of foods encourage little eyes and hands to treat the pages as a search and find. Much of that attitude can carry over into everyday life after reading this treasure of a book, encouraging discussion of food sources and the conditions that combine to allow things to grow and reach our tables.

In 2016 Chronicle Books released Shcaefer's BECAUSE OF AN ACORN,

which used a similar text and cut-out pattern to explore the interconnected lives within a forest . This earlier topic was illustrated by Frann Preston-Gannon, portraying woodland scenes and life cycles in natural tones and with subtle realism. 

While reading Schaefer's release I came across a slightly older picture book called BEGIN WITH A BEE, co-authored by Liza Ketchum, Jacqueline Briggs Martin, and Phyllis Root, and illustrated by Claudia McGehee.

Stunning scratchboard illustrations combine accurate details with interpretative flow and grace, realistic colors, and subtle elements that invite close scrutiny. The text is structured to engage readers with simple questions:

"What's inside this hole in the ground?"

University of Minnesota Press, 2021

An image on the opposite page demands attention, even from the bird who eyes a dark and unexplained opening in the ground. A page turn reveals the answer, but not without close examination. The bee in question is sleeping in its tiny underground nest, because it is a queen, a rusty-patched bumble bee, waiting out the winter in sleep.

Throughout successive pages of close-ups and maze-like linked images, woodland animals and subterranean habitats, readers will learn about a particular kind of fuzzy, bulbous bee with a distinctive rust-colored midriff. 

This picture book also reveals and celebrates a chain of life and connection, indicating quite a different life pattern than many young readers learn about honeybees. The plants and animals involved, the stages of reproduction and restoration for another year, process of eggs becoming larvae, pupae,  and eventually adult bees follow the course of summer into early fall. 

With this book, as with those above, back matter provides accessible further details about the progression of life within the account, adding a page of ten things young people can do to help bees survive and thrive.  In all cases the well-researched and relevant information is presented in ways that can be enjoyed and explored across a wide range of ages. Tension and dramatic arcs lead to exciting page turns, attentive discoveries, and countless questions to pursue. 

If young readers you know are not as enthralled with story-reading as you'd like, nonfiction books like these can tell the story of the real world in ways that invite repeated readings and also encourage pursuit of further reading. What great books to hook new fans of books!

BEFORE I LIVED HERE: A Journey Through Time

 Earth has an incredibly long history prior to any form of life emerging. Then, as anyone who ever scanned a planetary timeline knows, life on Earth preceded human arrival and spans the majority of a timeline of evolution, with humans having a comparative sliver as a  "last minute" arrival in comparison to all other life forms. That's an intriguing and somewhat academic view of our planet's history. If nothing else, it's a view that can leave us (me) feeling inconsequential and relatively "speck-like" in the big picture of the world.

The numbers and spans of time and magnitude of planetary change are overwhelming. That's why this picture book take on Earth's evolutionary stages feels both kid friendly and academically valuable. The "story" is anchored in a seemingly specific place, through the eyes and voice of a child, and with sufficient familiarity to other concepts to make the planetary  journey through time digestible. 

In BEFORE I LIVED HERE,  written by Stacy S. Jensen and illustrated by Victo Ngai, perspective shifts from past-to-present. Instead, a young first-person narrator shares their perspective through a second story window. With vibrant illustrations, readers come along to view a landscape of mountains, and the neighborhood of homes/community in the foreground, just outside the narrator's window. 

That perspective shift is captured in a single line:

"But my house was not always there."

NEAL PORTER BOOKS, Holiday House
2025

Successive pages, text and images offer views of the construction of that neighborhood, a surreal view of the planning and developing that preceded construction of modern times. Throughout all of these, the horizon of a mountain range. Each page turn moves the perspective back in time by centuries and more, revealing pioneers and the displaced original residents whose land had been stolen. Another turn depicts those Native folks living full community lives. Another turn takes us to (you guessed it) earlier dinosaur residents of that very territory. Throughout these page turns, the horizon of mountain range persists, even as the land is submerged in underwater in prior epochs.

 Only then, about a billion years BEFORE I LIVED HERE, that mountain range burst from the earth's crust, shaping the land around it. Other than on the prehistoric spreads, a squirrel graces some corner of the spreads, tying the place and continuity to the PLACE where this particular story is being unearthed from its past. 

The closing is equally succinct and effective, 

"Now, I see those mountains 

from my house."

In that penultimate spread, the barefoot narrator in modern clothing looks outward through a free-standing doorway along with a suspended window. Both of those openings to the land frame the current landscape of people and community. The expanse surrounding these frames are an accumulation line images in scratched into a black background base, rendered as rainbow-colored reminders of the prior pages. That superimposed contemporary view on foregrounded historic references offers a remarkable sense of the change and permanence in which we live on this planet. One final spread becomes a searchable expanse of the passages of time that have been described. 

Back matter extends the dramatically portrayed Earth-history with accessible details and brief descriptors  for each spread. This is a magical interpretation of very well-researched and documented nonfiction content. I genuinely believe that this highly scientific depiction of complex  information could be enjoyed by very young audiences, because the illustrations and language are told in reverse time, anchoring ideas in the local and familiar aspects of a neighborhood. It also offers older audiences an identifiable timeline and pattern of regression that invites anyone, anywhere, to look around and wonder, question, read, and research.

Concepts of permanence and change are challenging at early developmental levels, but this is a terrific way to share those concepts and other abstract relationships and expanses of time that will intrigue readers of many ages.

Abuelo Shares HOW TO REACH THE MOON!

 The genuine and uniquely deep love and connection of a child and their grandparent is undeniable. Many wonderful picture books center this special relationship, making it a major challenge for new stories with this framework to break through. To editors, to buyers, to readers. 

AMAZON CROSSING KIDS, 2022

HOW TO REACH THE MOON is written by Nicolás Schuff and illustrated by Ana Sender, with translation by Lawrence Shimel. It was successful in its original Spanish release, and now I've found it in English translation. I hope this commentary will help it find even more admirers. It goes without saying that picture books rely on partnerships between the author and illustrator, with advice and curation through the publisher's team of editors and art directors. In this case the translator was trusted with the original text that is both robust and exquisitely tender. 

During summer, Emilio travels by train to spend his vacation in the forest with his abuelo. In evocative illustrations perfectly paired with bright and colorful text, readers will find themselves joining Emilio at their rustic outdoor table, listening to Abuelo's imaginative stories, and dealing with questions about the moon. 

On one full moon night, Abuelo wakes Emilio to hike through the forest to meet the moon. Imaginative questions and descriptions lead them deeper until they reach a steep bluff at the edge of the forest. Could this be a secret path to the moon?

The answer to that question and what follows are moments I won't spoil by discussing them in these comments, other than to say that the magic is in the shared experiences, the relationship, and the possibilities that Emilio explores. 

Both the text/language and the glowingly dense art invite sensory engagement with these special two folks and their habitat, while the seemingly invisible work of the translator makes it feel as if the original language was English, in the best possible way. 

View this picture book is a gentle ode to multi-generational love and adventure, to nature's atmospheric impact on our hearts and minds, to the value of imagination to prepare us for the astonishing offerings of our very real world. This serves as a strong and memorable fictional story, but also as a bedtime story, a celebration of family, a virtual journey into the depths of nature, and more. That's a lot of promise, but this picture book delivers, with every word and spread. 

BEES and the Dog who Saved Them!

 

SLEEPING BEAR PRESS, 2025

Meet Mack, a rescue dog who is a true BEE hero (now retired). THE DOG WHO SAVED BEES is written by Stephanie Gibeault and illustrated by David Hohn. I've centered the cover, larger than usual, because that's exactly the attitude the cover invites. This nonfiction picture book celebrates MACK, and the illustrations capture MACK's personality wonderfully. You may also note the JUNIOR LITERARY GUILD designation as well as the stacks of beehives. 

There's a human component to Mack's story that should to be overlooked, even though she is subtly backgrounded on the cover. That's Cybil, the "Chief Apiary Inspector" for the Maryland Department of Agriculture. Why is she a part of the story? She was the account's "instigating factor" when she realizes that some of the bees who are transported back and forth across our nation had been infect with "foul brood" a highly contagious and untreatable bee disease. Unless infected hives could be identified and destroyed, they would contaminate others, threatening our national pollination and harvests of almonds, apples, strawberries, and many more food crops. 

Humans can identify infected hives by visual inspection of each hive, but it wasn't possible to do in time to release them for cross continental transport. But those infected hives release a specific stink, one that a dog might recognize and signal, similar to the way dogs can be trained to identify drugs and other contraband. 

That explanation is simplified and visualized in the opening pages, after which Cybil decides she might seek out a dog to train to detect the scent, something never tried before. Special "seek" dogs need to be very high energy and motivated enough to ignore all else when put to work. But those same traits can make dogs poor candidates as pets. Cybil tried (against advice) to work with Mack, a confined dog who was living a miserably boring life and was seen to be rowdy and disruptive. Cybil gave Mack a chance.

Training is described and shown in highly relatable text and images. When Cybils tried some innovative approaches to get her distractible trainee to focus, their work as a team took off. Once Mack could succeed at the seek/signal work with "foulbrood" scent, the real tests would follow. If anyone has ever been stung by a bee, you'll understand the challenge. Mack's work required sniffing closely at hive after hive, and that alone was worrying. When Mack was eventually stung, he resisted returning to work. 

The unfolding story has the appeal of an irresistible dog, the inspiration of an innovative and clever scientist, the stakes of the very food on our tables, and heartwarming visual storytelling. Back matter includes more about Mack, including photos and resources to verify the facts behind this magical tale. 

Many young audiences are ambivalent about bees, recognizing their value in ecosystems, appreciating their fuzzy buzzing and flight, but fearing their sting. The illustrator note even says he recalls a bee sting from childhood but values the variety of plant-based foods on his plate. The story evokes empathy for Mack, highly motivated to his task but reluctant to be hurt again. it will model the steps to overcome fear and gain confidence, and it should inspire many questions and further readings about bees "on the road", about their role in the full cycle of pollination-to-plate.

Summer is certainly prime time for reading about bees, but as impressive as those insects are, they rely on humans (and scent-seeking dogs) to sustain the health of the hive. Mack's story is central but adds enough elements to make agri-business information very kid-friendly, serving as a portal to further nonfiction reading. Mack, the dog, is memorable and so is this nonfiction picture book. Highly recommended.