HONEY BEE

A chatty, wide-ranging introduction to the honey bee for older preschoolers and younger elementary-age students.

Chakrabarti Basu, who introduces herself as “an Indian scientist who lives and works in the United States,” neatly balances respect for her audience’s curiosity with an understanding of the need to refrain from overloading them with information. “Located at the end of the abdomen, the stinger is a sharp point used for injecting bee venom into enemies. Bees sting when they’re angry or scared,” she writes. (While there is a glossary that concludes the book, it is not comprehensive; adults sharing this book with children may need to help them with words such as venom and, a bit later, superorganism, among others.) In thematically organized spreads and with text broken into neatly digestible chunks, Chakrabarti Basu discusses different honey bee species, beekeeping tools, honey bee anatomy, nests (both wild-built and “human-made”), the different members of a honey bee colony, and more. Weguelin’s bright illustrations are simple and a bit stylized but resist anthropomorphization; they lend themselves well to the book’s occasional diagrams. Children’s shelves are abuzz with bee books, but this efficient offering stands out in its comprehensiveness, unspooling for readers a neat string of cool facts: Honey bees like “dirty water” with lots of minerals in it; they can’t see red, but they do see blue and yellow. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

As hardworking as the insect it celebrates.