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Bees are in trouble! Richard Faith tries to alert young readers to their plight in his new picture book Bee Scared. Through careful story telling and potential problem solving, Mr. Faith hopes to encourage young people to help be part of the solution. How can we help these small members of our world thrive again?
What I am Reviewing
Bee Scared, is an Old Doc Turtle adventure from author Richard Faith. This picture book follows the Queen and her community of family and friends as they try to find a solution to a rather scary problem. They come up with a rather creative solution, but I have to admit, it didn’t really seem like a solution to me. 🙂 Makes me wonder if young children reading it will think of it as a solution or realize that more work needs to be done.
Can your young reader think of any ways to help Auntie Bee save the honeybees? Will their eyes be opened up to the need to protect the vulnerable insects among us?
I was supposed to get a paperback copy sent to me but that somehow disappeared so I’ll be reviewing a PDF copy of this softcover picture book. Bee Scared is the first in a series Old Doc Turtle Adventures. 29 pages of full colour illustrated by Todd Hobin. It brought to mind the bumble bees I dealt with this summer.
Digging Deeper
You’ll find the text has been helpfully placed on a screen of white to make it easier to read. The lyrics are provided in rhyming meter. The rhyme is not consistent, sometimes being alternative lines and other times being rhyming couplets. Either way, it makes for easy reading for all ages.
Artist Todd Hobin provides not quite realistic bee hives, going for the cartoon model rather than the more natural bee hives in trees or in man-made hives. I love how he filled each page with colour while providing white space for the text. The natural colours throughout fit well into the lives of bees and their world.
A solution was provided….the flight of the bumblebee dance… which I’m not quite sure was a good solution. And I’m not so sure the message was clear that MORE and BETTER solutions need to be found for the honey bee crisis. But I did find the solution funny to think of the dance being used. 🙂 Would be a great way to introduce this music to young children though, don’t you think?
I love this closing page with old Mr. Turtle’s call to action. Can we find ways to help the honey bees? How can we (young and old) make the honey bees safe again? We need these pollinators so we musn’t let them disappear!
Bee Scared, should you get it?
I think Mr. Faith makes a decent stab at helping to alert young readers to the honey bee crisis. Is Bee Scared the complete answer? Of course not, it’s a picture book for children! But it will help.
The pictures fit the story. The bees recognize the problem, and they want to live safely. I love the closing where he calls young readers to action. Save the bees! Think on ways to help these tiny creatures if you can.
I like the illustrations and LOVE the inclusion of the title of a piece of classical music.
so did I! (the music) I thought that was very clever.