  | Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 02/15/2018 *Starred Review* In bouncy, lilting verse and vibrant, inviting artwork, this ode to the humble honeybee is dripping with charm: “This is the flower the bee has chosen. / This is the flower the pollen grows in. / This is the flower, its color so bright / its sweet blooming scent calls the bee from its flight.” Hall’s lively lines skitter around Arsenault’s warm, honey-colored illustrations packed with jostling, abstract plants and cheerful bees with cartoonishly huge eyes. The bees buzz around the pages, seeking out flowers, bringing nectar back to the hive, making honey, and locking it up tight in their honeycombs, before nestling together through the long, cold winter. With occasional speech balloons and delightfully expressive gestures, the bees mirror the gleeful tone of the poem, as do the handwritten fonts in varying sizes. Arsenault’s scenes are a captivating mixture of smudgy charcoals, soft yellows, and fluorescent oranges, combining crisp shapes with more abstract figures. The entertaining tone and freewheeling art are a pure joy, but there’s plenty of science here, too, and a closing note about the importance of bees to our ecosystem brings the point home. Boisterously written, gorgeously illustrated, and sneakily educational. - Copyright 2018 Booklist. School Library Journal - 04/01/2018 PreS-Gr 2—Hall celebrates honeybees with a lyrical poem. She hears a bee among the flowers, then finds and follows it as it searches for nectar, gathers pollen, and returns to the hive to dance. She watches other foragers leave as house bees make the nectar into honey. The bees huddle quietly with their queen through the long winter, reemerging in the spring. This simplifies the process slightly, but doesn't diminish the wonder. These well-crafted rhyming couplets beg to be read aloud. Set on gloriously illustrated pages and nicely paced, the text appears to be hand printed in varying fonts, becoming part of Arsenault's light and lively illustrations done in ink, gouache, pencil, and colored pencil. The artist uses neon orange to great effect, highlighting the pollen bees find and carry off. (Adult readers may want to point out that bees see the world's color very differently.) After the busyness of summer work, a wordless spread—a snowy landscape where the hive hangs peacefully from a tree—emphasizes the quiet rest of winter. Yellow-and-black striped endpapers and an embossed cover add to the effect. While the narrative and illustrations will appeal to very young listeners, the back matter, which touches on current threats, seems addressed to older children, suggesting ways in which they can help honeybees survive. VERDICT A sweet success; purchase for most shelves.—Kathleen Isaacs, Children's Literature Specialist, Pasadena, MD - Copyright 2018 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Loading...
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