While hardly the only bee book available, this handsome, respectful volume deserves a place on the shelfĪ home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature. Lovelock’s full-bleed paintings, done in watercolor, acrylic ink and colored pencil, vary in perspective and scale, making the most of the autumn palette and refraining at all times from anthropomorphizing their subjects. The text at times strains under figurative language that’s not quite right-the bees “flick from the hive like golden pebbles”-but by and large, it succeeds in accurately dramatizing honeybee behavior. Running alongside the narrative of Scout’s day are supplemental facts about the science of bees (flying charges them with static electricity, attracting pollen, for instance), and a brief author’s note and index provide additional informational heft. Once inside, she does her waggle dance so her “sister bees” can find her meadow and harvest enough nectar to make honey for the winter.
A sudden hailstorm temporarily grounds her, and when she arrives home, guard bees are battling a wasp that’s attempting to rob the hive. It is fall, and Scout seeks its “last flowers.” Through winds and past a hungry black bird, she finds a “sea of flowers” from which she gathers nectar and pollen. Naming his protagonist Scout for her current role in the hive, Huber delivers a present-tense narrative of her odyssey. A New Zealand import describes a worker honeybee‘s scouting mission.
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