Author: Dawn Pape
Publisher: Good Green Life Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!
This is a wonderful young children's story about the fact the bees are slowly becoming extinct, and when they do - if we do not prevent it - we're going to be in a much sorrier state than ever we will be through climate change. Climate change will screw up this planet, I promise you, but losing bees will hit us with a gut punch from which we will have a seriously hard time recovering.
Dawn Pape, a self-described "lawn-chair gardener" has a degree in Environmental Studies and a Master's in Environmental Education, and this story features her own son meeting a bee and learning all about what bees do and why it's important. It's told in a sing-song rhyme and illustrated with photographs, some of which are augmented to make the bee look a little more human, with startled eyes and smiles!
At first, Mason is scared of the bee, but slowly he comes to realize that it's not interested in him. It's just "wants to do its job" - gathering nectar and pollen for its own purposes, but incidentally pollinating the plants as it does so. This is a symbiotic relationship that's been going on for a hundred million years - that is until humans came along at the very end of that huge time period and started screwing things up.
Contrary to what you may have heard on Doctor Who(!), bees aren't aliens! There are some twenty thousand species of them, all evolved on Earth and they range in size from a variety of "sting-less" bee measuring only two millimeters (believe it or not - Trigonisco duckel!) to the Mason bee, featured in this story, which can grow to almost 40 millimeters.
The death of a beehive is referred to these days as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) - that is as long as it meets certain criteria. Forms of it have been noted for a hundred and fifty years on a small scale, but over the last forty years, the problem seems to have become far more serious than an occasional outbreak, with wild bee populations going into decline, and "domesticated" colonies being hit noticeably. By 2007, "...large commercial migratory beekeepers in several states had reported heavy losses associated with CCD. Their reports of losses varied widely, ranging from 30% to 90% of their bee colonies" (wikipedia).
There is a variety of causes for CCD "...such as pesticides, mites, fungus, beekeeping practices (such as the use of antibiotics or long-distance transportation of beehives), malnutrition, other pathogens, and immunodeficiencies. The current scientific consensus is that no single factor is causing CCD" (wikipedia). The author of this story book seems to place the blame on neonicotinoids a component of pesticides, and there seems to be a scientific consensus supporting her conclusion: "A 2013 peer-reviewed literature review concluded neonicotinoids in the amounts typically used harm bees and safer alternatives are urgently needed."
So there it is. It's an important topic, and it's one of a type which you do not usually see tackled in children's literature. That's why this book is important, and can be a useful part of any young child's environmental education. I recommend it as part of a complete environmental education that every child should have.
