Rating: WORTHY!
Illustrated gorgeously by Aida Sofia Barba, this young children's story tells of Beetrice, who was a young expert on bees, styling her hair with beeswax and wearing antenna-like deely bobbers on her hair band. She eats B vitamins and enjoys honey on her waffles (not pancakes as Aida illustrates! Or did Julia change the story after Aida had gone off to do her work? Hmm! Something bee not write here!).
Full disclosure! I am a big fan of Julia Dweck's amazing name and also of her writing. I favorably reviewed Eville USA back in August of 2015, and Furmaid a year before that. She does a good job. And no, I don't know her and she doesn't pay me to write nice reviews! I am a bit biased towards an author though who has provided me with consistently entertaining reading. I'd bee a fool not to be!
But I digress! Beetrice does reasonably well in school, doesn't let the school bully bother her. She enjoys Halloween with her friend Dewy, who unfortunately doesn't think that Apoidea are the bee all and end all of life. It's almost enough to make him break out in hives.... But Beetrice realizes the difference between bees and wasps, letting the useful, honey-gathering, pollinating bee out of the window rather than trying to kill it. She fantasizes about joining them - or maybe magically does join them!
These little insects are so bee-deviled these days, and we're so dependent upon them that it's foolish not to treat them as Bee FFs - while giving them a healthy dose of respect, of course. The truth is that bees aren't out to get you. They have no agenda other than gathering pollen and making more bees. I've watched them in my yard at close quarters very many times, while they pollinate my flowers, and never once have I bothered them or they me. Note, though, that these are regular honey bees, not the 'Africanized' variety, which I definitely wouldn't mess with, rest assured!
There were a couple of small issues I had with this, otherwise it was perfect. The author had a problem differentiating plural from singular when talking about the bee's life cycle - it's larva and pupa. Larvae and pupae are the plurals. The other problem is that bees are not wasps. They do not sting and live to fight another day. They're suicide bombers and they will die, because their sting is torn out of their body, remaining in your skin to pump in more venom with a little muscle that isn't that much different from a heart when you get right down to it, while the disemboweled bee buzzes off to die. This is why it's important to remove the sting ASAP, and not by pinching it between your thumb and forefinger, which will simply squeeze more venom into your body, but by pulling it out with carefully-applied tweezers if they're readily available, or by scraping it away from the wound with a small stick or even the edge of a credit card or something. Anything which prevent the little venom sac being squeezed any more than it is already.
That said, I loved this book and I recommend it as a worthy read. Bee there or be square!
