The King of Bees by Lester L. Laminack, illustratedby Jim LaMarche. PICTURE BOOK. Peachtree, 2018. $18.
9781561459537
BUYING ADVISORY: EL (K-3), EL – OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: LOW
Henry lives in South Carolina with his aunt Lilla. He loves
the bee hive boxes and can’t wait to help with them. He has shown he’s
responsible enough to gather the eggs. While Lilla teaches him about bees, such
as how most of the working bees are females, Henry’s curiosity grows. He
becomes convinced that his “talking dance” helped the bees find the clovers in
the neighbor’s pasture, so when they need to find the new box, he dons his
aunt’s bee suit and gets closer to the hive than ever before. He becomes their
king bee.
The color pencil illustrations match well with the pastoral
setting, and the text gives lots of interesting facts about bees. However, this
story is on the longer side for picture books and barely kept my interest to the end. Despite how charming Henry is portrayed, the whole package moves along
too slowly. I found the bee information interesting, but awkwardly interspersed
in a story with minimal plot points.
P. K. Foster, teacher-librarian
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