Pablo Cartaya calls himself a method writer—like a method actor plunging into a role, he immerses himself in the worlds he writes about. For his middle-grade dystopian novel, The Last Beekeeper (Harper/HarperCollins, July 12), he donned protective gear and visited bee farms in the Northeast and Southeast; he even got cellulitis following a wasp sting. “When I’m embedded into my world, my characters, I get really deep, and I want to know everything,” he says via a Zoom call from his home in Miami.

Understanding bees was central to his book, which is set in a world reeling from the effects of climate change, where honeybees are thought to be extinct—a terrifying prospect but one that doesn’t bother most inhabitants; propaganda has convinced many that bees are “killer insects.” However, 12-year-old Yolanda Cicerón and her older sister, Camila, discover a colony on their farm and, by reading a book and notes written by their now-dead Abuelita, realize that the bees are key to the survival of their community and to combating their authoritarian government.

Bees are misunderstood, says Cartaya. Though our instinct upon seeing a bee is often to panic, they are “vital to the environment.” He wanted to “explore the idea that these seemingly annoying pests are actually really quite good for us and for our world.”

Though The Last Beekeeper might seem like a departure from his earlier works of realistic fiction, in many ways it’s rooted in realism. Cartaya was spurred by events such as the storms that swept across Texas in February 2021, resulting in power and internet outages and shortages of food, water, and heat. Cartaya imagined a society devastated by hurricanes, earthquakes, and freezes—events that don’t “necessarily wipe out the entire Earth’s population. But [they wipe] out a large number of [people]. And then the groups that survive, they’re not communicating with anybody else outside of that particular region.” He asked himself what that community might look like.

The world he envisioned is disturbingly similar to our own. While the characters have regrouped and rebuilt, access to resources is imbalanced. The residents of the city of Silo have a level of wealth and privilege that those in the Valley, like Yoly and Cami, can only dream of. Eager to escape her lot in life, Yoly accepts scholarship money so she can stay in school and become a neurolink surgeon (a prestigious job that involves implanting computer chips into human skulls). But too late she finds herself saddled with debt. To ensure his worldbuilding rang true, Cartaya spoke to Michael Pirson, an associate professor of management systems at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, whose work concerns global sustainability, social entrepreneurship, and human dignity violations. Cartaya came away with an understanding of how “people can come together in crisis and then splinter off into camps of oppressors and oppressed.” Cartaya adds, “Humans have a capacity for such good and such amazing things. And yet we terrorize ourselves; we terrorize each other. It’s incomprehensible to me.”

Still, hope pervades the novel as Yoly’s eyes open to the evils around her and she realizes she needs to take a stand. The tension between her and Cami—who has seen firsthand what happens to those who step out of line and is committed to keeping her sister safe—is especially compelling. “It’s our lives right now,” says Cartaya. “There seem to be 1,000 different fronts,” he says. “You're trying to be an advocate for all the ills and the wrongs in this world, and you just don't even know what front to fight on anymore.”

The bond between the sisters is powerful—no surprise given that family is a subject Cartaya frequently returns to in his work. “There are four things that I always put in all my books: the themes of family, community, culture, and abuelas.” His own abuela died of cancer when he was in fourth grade, yet he still feels her presence. “She’s with me in the choices I make, in the type of parent I am, in the type of company I keep,” he says. Similarly, Yoly and Cami still feel Abuelita through the knowledge she continues to impart. “It’s just an extension of how I feel about my own abuela,” he notes.

Cartaya’s characters always manage to surprise him. “I think it’s because I spend so much time trying to understand who the characters are. And so by the time I put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard or whatever, they’re fully formed.” Characters whom Cartaya deeply loves may have different perspectives than his, like Yoly’s best friend, Arelis, who is skeptical when Yoly tries to convince her they must fight back against those in power. “When things are bad, people’s true nature tends to come out. And it isn’t usually very pretty,” Arelis responds. Cartaya has a more hopeful outlook, but he stresses, “I respect her experiences. And I respect what she has gone through.” He adds, “I can’t embed my belief system in a character.”

He’s just as amazed by his readers as he is by his characters. “Their resilience, their sense of humor, and their unapologetic honesty [are]...inspiring,” he says. “I wish I was as brave as they were when I was their age.”

Though the topics Cartaya takes on—student debt, climate change, inequities—might sound overwhelming, even frightening, in a book aimed at middle graders, he refuses to give his readers anything less than the truth. “I have too much respect for that audience,” he says. “I hated being talked down to as a kid. And so I will never do that.” He also feels it’s his duty as an author. “The purpose of a writer is to reflect the world that they’re living in and to examine the questions that are relevant in our world, whether…our stories take place 125 years in the future, as with The Last Beekeeper, or the past, or anywhere.”

Cartaya always strives to be honest with readers. While many dystopian novels frame technology as something insidious, Cartaya took a more balanced approach; to do otherwise, he says, would be to ignore the important role technology and social media play in young people’s lives. Thus Yoly realizes that while the government uses technology for nefarious means, it can also be used for good. He likens her initial longings to leave the Valley for Silo to our relationships with Twitter or Instagram. “She’s [thinking], ‘I want to go there because that’s where the technology is. That’s where the good stuff is.’ We've all had that sort of thing, right? ‘I want to get more Twitter followers, I want to get more IG followers.’ ”

He recognizes, too, that young people juggle school, family, friends, and more, and though tweens have far more agency than younger children, they’re still beholden to the adults around them. He believes that kids need stories that reflect the complexities of their lives. “I love tackling stories that have multitudes because young people live in multitudes; they don't live in singularities,” he says.

Above all, Cartaya wants readers “to understand that I respect the multitudes of their experiences. I respect the experiences that are often flooded with darkness and also with hope. And with happiness….My task is to give that to them, honestly.” 

Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.