Where Have all the Bees Gone? By Rebecca E. Hirsch - ADVISABLE

Where Have all the Bees Gone? By Rebecca E. Hirsch, 104 pages. NON-FICTION. Twenty-First Century Books (Lerner), 2020.   

Language: G (0 swears); Mature Content: G; Violence: G.

BUYING ADVISORY: EL - ADVISABLE 

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

The quote by naturalist John Muir included at the beginning of chapter 5 sums up much of what this book presents: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” This book looks into all of those connections from the evolution of bees to what bees provide to all the reasons they are disappearing.  

The author does a good job at grabbing the readers attention by starting with an expedition to find one particular kind of bee that appears to have disappeared. I immediately felt invested in him finding it. Because I was enjoying the narrative, I skipped over all the added notes on several of the pages and had to come back to them. I think these prolific pieces of extra information in the book detract from the main text.  

Jen Wecker, HS English Teacher