Customer Reviews

Happy Bees!

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Energetically illustrated by Carey Armstrong-Ellis, Happy Bees! by Arthur Yorinks is a picturebook that comes with a bonus CD of ten festive bee songs. Young readers are treated to the dilemma that a swarm of bees presents, causing havoc among humans at a picnic, chasing a bear after their honey, or just playing tag. The exuberant color pictures have a hidden ladybug in each spread, and the very simple text encourages beginning readers to sound out their first words. A rollicking fun read-aloud story.

My kids and I love this book. We first discovered it on one of our weekly trips to the library and loved it so much we had to buy it. My 4 and 6 year old love dancing to the CD, which we even played on our roadtrip to the beach. It is hilarious and a must have for small kids!

Dreadful. Got this from the library and feel I've had a lucky escape not to have spent money on it. It makes absolutely no sense at all, the music is awful, it barely rhymes, the rhythms are near to non-existent and it contains absolutely no actual information, jokes, fun or educational merit. Please do not waste your money. It's not often something is bad enough to move me to post a review when I haven't even spent good money on it, but this was.

Okay, so I give it one star because the illustrations are mildly amusing at most, despite being a bit intense with lots of illustrations of scared/horrified faces in response to the bees.
That being said, the writing is just not good. It's almost as if the author said, "Hmm, I want to write a book about bees. Now let me think of as many words as I can that rhyme with the word 'bees' and somehow try to make a coherent story about it." Like I said, I tried to like it, but the very first line gave me a bad impression and left me thinking, "Huh???" Here's the first line so you get my drift: "Happy Bees, even the fleas love 'em. How can you not, as big as a dot, buzzing around a lot?" Is it just me, or does this not make any sense whatsoever? Why on earth would fleas love bees? You can tell that fleas are only mentioned because they rhyme with "bees" because then they're never mentioned again. Even with the illustration, it doesn't make sense. And don't get my started on the inconsistent rhyming. The book doesn't even have room to go downhill. It starts out there. This is one of those books where you read it and you think, "Wow, I guess anyone can get a children's book published." This is not true, of course, but it leaves me wondering how this one did.
Then we go to the CD. I thought that if I listened to the CD that the rhyme scheme, the rhythm, and the book in general would make more sense. I really tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. I was mistaken. The music was bad, made no sense (like the book) and really wasn't "singable" for adults or kids. I'm a music teacher and I can tell when somebody can write music and when someone thinks they can write music. This music sounds like it was written by someone who thinks anyone could write music for kids or thinks that it doesn't matter if the music is poor quality because supposedly kids can't tell the difference anyway. Poorly written music. Poor lyrics. I'm sorry to say, a poor product and story overall.
If you're looking for something with better rhyme scheme, better story, better illustrations, better humor, better message, WITH a singable CD for kids, check out "Marsupial Sue" by John Lithgow.