Meet HONEYBEE: A Masterclass in Text and Images

Recently, public awareness of the plight of the honeybee, species apis mellifera, has gained public attention, concern, and efforts to intervene. Trends vary, from steady declines in populations for decades to some recent encouraging news about stabilizing colony collapse in some regions. 
That's the macro-view of HONEYBEES. 

NEAL PORTER BOOKS/Holiday House, 2020

The recent picture book by author Candace Fleming and illustrator Eric Rohmann presents a micro-view, an up-close-and-personal introduction to the life of an individual honeybee, called Apis for short. 
HONEYBEE: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera allows readers to absorb the remarkable complexity and necessity of the species while feeling a personal connection throughout every event in the short life of a single, particular honeybee.
This is much more than the theoretical biography of a single honeybee. 
It is also much more than a "how-to" book for wannabe honeybees. 
It could serve both purposes well. 

And yet...
any mundane comparison of this book to any other on the topic would miserably understate the combination of superb text and remarkable illustration, both of which reveal deep and accurate research with sensitive and lyrical artistry. 
The large trim size with impressively-scaled images set the stage for little Apis to meet us eye to eye. From that vantage she conveys her big role in the world and has readers cheering her on through each stage of her short but essential life. 
The familiar honeybee role-- gathering nectar and pollenating plants -- is a climax known from the start. Even so, the reader observes Apis developing from her infant-gray hours through to her eventual, glorious launch from the hive, cheering and caring for her at every dramatic page turn.
Apis begins her life cycle before the title page when she first cracks the surface of her wax cell and emerges into a massively interdependent social system. The question of how and why she so successfully progresses through each important life stage and hive-service is not addressed, but readers can sense that she is driven to do so, as is true of her thousands of sisters, bee after bee, life cycle after life cycle. That is a miracle of nature that we allow to decline and disappear at the risk of Earth's survival.
An equally powerful miracle is the way this pairing of storytelling and images left this reader feeling as if we just might be meeting an actual individual bee. 
I have always appreciated and respected bees, even though I stepped on one barefoot at age five. (Full confession-- I did not actually appreciate that particular bee.) 
I have followed many of the suggested actions to support honeybees that the author included in the excellent back matter. I have helped students learn much of this content and would have loved to use this book to do so- including the outstanding, labeled, double-page spread honeybee diagram at the conclusion. 
Despite all those positive attitudes about honeybees, I have NEVER before felt such an affectionate and protective reaction to the concept or the embodiment of honeybees.

Do not imagine that this was accomplished through an anthropomorphized portrayal. Apis does not adopt a first person voice. There is no contrivance needed, beyond the magic of gifted writing and illustration, to achieve this magic. Rather than making Apis seem human, readers are drawn so deeply into her world that we become one among the hive. 
At least that is how I felt.
Many readers are likely to have had a scary-or-painful encounter with a honeybee at one time or another. Some children may even have developed anxiety reactions about bees. Even so, I am convinced this astonishing picture book would convert them to become fans of honeybees. 

The creators of this book paired their brilliance on several prior projects, and I'm counting on them to do the same with future results. GIANT SQUID is a topic that is far less familiar to readers (or to science). It's a topic that might captivate some, but lacks the wide and deep fan base of honeybees. 
Until you read the book.
The award committees agreed: it was named Sibert Honor Book, NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor Book, and Charlotte Zolotow Honor Book, among other recognitions.
I feel safe in predicting that HONEYBEE: The Busy Life of Apis Melliflera will meet or exceed those accolades. You can bet on it.


For another take on HONEYBEES check out my Goodreads notes about THE THING ABOUT BEES, A LOVE LETTER, written and illustrated by Chabazz Larkin.

They're Back, But For How Long?

Readers of this blog are aware of my contrarian attitude about focusing on theme months, specific holidays, etc. as a reason to feature quality titles, only to mentally (or even physically) stuff them away for the remainder of the year. Earth Day was several weeks ago, but the backstory on this event stretches through time into the past, the present, and our multi-generational futures.
The forces threatening Mother Nature's delicate balance have been at work since before the advent of humankind, but the footprint of civilization has crushed wide swaths of nature in its wake. Rachel Carson's paradigm-shifting SILENT SPRING celebrated its fiftieth anniversary last year (2012), the same year that marked the death of another noble defender of nature, Jean Craighead George. No words of praise from me or others can do justice to the impact her writings have had in leading countless readers along a path of responsible conservation of Earth's resources, especially wildlife.

Dutton Juvenile, 2008

George's work on her writings and her cause continued until the end of her days, and beyond. (see below)  Her series focusing attention on the loss of species to particular habitats and their eventual restoration began with THE WOLVES ARE BACK. Each of the titles in this series paired her text with paintings by Wendell Minor. In this book the sad truth is told that wolves were intentionally eliminated from Yellowstone National Park in order to offer public viewing of only more docile creatures. That elimination involved shooting and tapping wolves until every last one was gone. Only after they were missed, truly mourned, were packs reinstated. Over time, their presence has enhanced the quality and balance of the entire ecosystem, including food chains, populations of other species,  and the natural growth patterns of grasses and woodlands.

Dutton Juvenile, 2010

Two years later THE BUFFALO ARE BACK was released, produced with the same pairing of George's words  and Minor's paintings. Once again the sad truth is that the buffalo were also eliminated intentionally as a means of controlling the survival of Native Americans and their reliance on prairie traditions. Removal of the buffalo led directly to dependence on reservation life.
Almost a decade before Silent Spring was published I recall standing  with my fourth grade classmates for a choral recitation of the eloquent short poem by Carl Sandburg, Buffalo Dusk.

The Buffaloes are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by the thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod
into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,
Those who sawa the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone.

George's text is equally eloquent in its clear portrayal of the domino effects this interference with nature generated. A cascade of negative consequences followed: plowing, farming, and  predictable climate cycles of drought and flood resulted in the grasshopper plagues, erosion, and the dustbowl.

Dial Books, 2013

Last March, less than a year after her death, THE EAGLES ARE BACK was published posthumously. In this case the loss of our incomparable eagles was the inevitable but unintended consequence of the use of pesticides, developed in part to maximize crops from the depleted plains. In this portrayal a young boy begins his own lifetime commitment to nature when he experiences firsthand the dwindling population of eagles. In the course of the book legislation and conservation actions, promoted by the leaders who created Earth Day, help to restore health to the entire food chain, allowing eagles to once again breed successfully. 

I hope these books will find their way into the hands of young readers, initiating a domino effect of positive consequences. My life has spanned the years when extinction and loss were considered inevitable and irreversible, on to years of awareness and activism on behalf of nature. Now, though, the good news contained in these portrayals has produced the twin challenges penned by Dickens: ignorance and apathy. When populations have recovered enough that states now allow hunting and trapping of wolves, when the boundaries of national parks form an unfenced border beyond which these restored species are game, it's far to easy to assume that extinction is not a concern. Our vigilance must be greater than ever. The youth of today need to read these stories of species on the brink of disappearing in order to become tomorrow's defenders of the cause to which Caron and George devoted their lives.