Customer Reviews

American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds

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Up front I will confess my prejudice about this book: I'm in it, albeit as a minor historical character. For me the spring months of 1958, 1959, and 1960 were largely taken up by study of word lists, culminating in three shots at the National Spelling Bee.

But James Maguire mostly has fresher fish to fry: real time spent with real kids who compete in the modern Bee, lately popularized through television broadcasts on ESPN and ABC. If teenaged kids and their strivings to find identity and accomplishment have any appeal for you, you will enjoy this account.

This has been a very good year for spelling bees. ABC put the 2006 final rounds on prime-time TV. The film "Akeelah and the Bee" vividly captured the home-front and on-stage drama of the Bee, taking off where the 2002 documentary "Spellbound" left off. Starbucks promoted the film with an attractive sprinkling of coasters, coffee collars, mugs, and flashcards decorated with foot-long winning words from the national Bee. The musical "25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" continues to play on Broadway and in regional companies.

Now James Maguire gives us a broad and entertaining journalistic book on the subject. He profiles five competitors in depth, having befriended them, visited their homes, and hung out with them among family and friends as they balance "normal" schoolwork and activities with the single-minded pursuit of exotic words and etymology. He follows them to the national competition in Washington, which equals any major-league sporting event in risk and suspense. In between episodes, to break the tension, he light-heartedly fills us in on the mottled history of English words and dictionaries, making it clear how and why we reached the hopeless confusion of modern spelling.

Maguire is an engaging writer and does complete justice to the Bee experience. He brings out the themes of ambition, concentration, luck, anxiety, coping with failure, and support of family as they play out over the considerable age range of the competitors -- anywhere between 9 and 14. Just as most of us enjoy sports dramas whether or not we ever kicked a ball straight, I believe all of us, former spellers or not, can recognize ourselves in these kids as they set an impossible goal and go for it.

Maguire does a stellar job engaging the reader's interest in the characters. He does more than interview them, he spends time with their families, learns their hopes, dreams and fears, which puts many an adult to shame with their incredible work ethic and study habits. We learn that the kids are not automatons but well-rounded kids who often excel in many subjects. For anyone who has competed in competitions, one can appreciate the drive and loneliness one incurs in working towards a goal. There is definite drama and as an excellent speller, I came away impressed with the kids' abilities and determination. The book is not a narrative, there are interviews with prior champions and a history of the English language included. I wholeheartedly recommend American Bee.
-- Jacqueline and Jeremy

James Maguire has written a fascinating account of the National Spelling Bee in American Bee. The work discusses the broad history of the spelling bee in America, focusing on the National Spelling Bee, as well as bringing us stories of particular spellers. As someone who's made it to "the show" as a finalist (86 and 87), this book really resonated with me. The essential speller experience -- hours spent drilling words; the thrill of (and sometimes disbelief at) winning a regional bee; the excitement of the big event in Washington DC; the camaraderie of the spellers; the gut-wrenching nervousness waiting on-stage; the agony of being eliminated; and the aftermath -- these are all accurately recounted in the book and brought back great memories.

American Bee is a sports story (the Bee is shown each year on ESPN), a story for kids, adults, and a story about our difficult, quirky English language. The reader will go on the journey with several spellers, all the way to D.C. You find they are still normal kids, coming from many different backgrounds, but all with the same passion, drive and determination and hard work it takes to get there. James Maguire spent time with them, and tells their wonderful, captivating story. After watching the latest movies regarding the Bee, and being a former elementary school Spelling Bee champion, I grabbed this book off the shelf when I saw it. I wasn't disappointed, and I highly recommend it for everyone, even if you aren't a "word nerd."

Maguire's story of the road to orthography fame is pure delight. While he takes us into the unique personal lives of the youth who strive to win the Scripps National Bee, his writing remains crisp and entertaining. Through exquisite narration, the reader becomes intimately involved in the stories of triumph over hardship, family sacrifice, self determination and a riveting account of the prize at the end. If you are interested in the Scripps competition, or in improving your own vocabulary, or just in a compelling story of the American dream, don't miss this book!

James Maguire is a wonderful storyteller. He brings the Spelling Bee right into our homes, and by sharing with us the funny, passionate, stirring and inspiring stories of the young boys and girls, Maguire also finds the way into our hearts. Many Spelling Bee fans have known that the competition is much more than memorizing difficult, quaint, strange and longwinded words. And Maguire deftly and vividly shows us how the kids go around preparing for the competition. There is a lot of technical stuff to be explained and Magurie does it with ease. On many occasions during the time I taught feature writing at New York University, students used to ask me about writing technical and science stories for consumer magazines. If I were teaching the course now, I would recommend American Bee.

It is a fun book but it is also filled with wisdom and human stories. And there are many life lessons in it. Maguire also demolishes several myths including the one that only the rich kids can get the resources and help to reach the top.

I highly recommend this book. The Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee has become an American institution, and "American Bee" accurately captures the spirit and drama of this annual event. I especially enjoyed reading the profiles of the top spellers and their families. The Bee's ace spellers are fascinating and exceptional individuals -- high-achievers who are both intelligent and determined to succeed. They are America's future. James Maguires offers us a fascinating glimpse into their personalities. Overall it is a light, fun read; my mother, a retired schoolteacher who seldom reads anything but the newspaper, read it from cover to cover in a few days and loved it.

Like Spellbound and Akeelah and the Bee, this book helps get America geared up for the upcoming National Spelling Bee. For some, this is an event they see in passing the week after Memorial Day. But for others, as Maguire notes, this week of competition has been planned for days, weeks, and in some cases, years in advance.

The book is divided into sections, examining the Bee from many angles, including participant profiles (past and present), the history of language, and the history of competitive spelling. If you have read "Positively Fifth Street" by James McManus, it is a lot like that with respect to the variety of topics it explores.

Obviously, for a Bee enthusiast, the best parts of the book deal with the actual competition. Like Spellbound, Maguire's book traces the steps of hopeful national bee winners for the 2005 competition. One of the advantages, I think, of this book over the movie, is that the book was released very quickly. Spellbound followed the 1999 Bee so when you watched the movie, the kids were yesterday's news. A few of the spellers featured in American Bee will make return appearances this year. Maguire picks five excellent spellers to feature - ranging from the West Coast to East, male and female, young and old (relatively speaking).

For anyone who finds that they are sitting on the edge of their seat the Thursday after Memorial Day, this is a good read. For a Bee enthusiast, to which the names Rebecca Sealfon and the Goldstein family mean something, this is a must read.

I was a spelling bee nut growing up, and this is the sort of book I always wanted to see. Yes, I'm one of the "word nerds" (1986 National Spelling Bee contestant, current magazine editor, and winner of a corporate spelling bee a few years ago), so I thoroughly enjoyed the book's journey through the history of spelling bees, the National Bee, the English language, and the dictionary, plus the peeks behind the scenes as the spellers prepare, the word list is assembled, and Bee Week progresses. The author captures all the inherent humor and drama of competitive spelling, and it was easy to see he enjoyed doing it.

Maguire leads the reader through all aspects of the Bee. When and why was it started? How do contestants make it to Washington, D.C? How in the world do they assemble those word lists and, more importantly, how do these 9 to 14-year olds manage to decipher them?

His profile of 5 of the contestants from their school or area bees through the 2005 National Spelling Bee reveals that their shared unusual passion for words and etymology might be the only thing that sets them apart from any other typical 9 to 14-year-olds. I was surprised to learn that they are not just spelling "nerds."

A wonderfully insightful book and a must read for any fan of the Bee.