Customer Reviews

In the Trees, Honey Bees!

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I just read this to my daughter last night, and I consider it an excellent book. It was well-designed for a wide range of reading abilities, and I think that ages 4-12 is accurate, given the illustrations and information provided.

I have been a beekeeper since 1996. I am usually pretty disappointed by books written at a child's level regarding honeybees, finding they are either too basic, too fantastic, or simply inaccurate.

Not so with this book!

First of all - I cannot speak highly enough of the illustrations. I have seen a lot of hand-drawn honeybees in my time, and they inevitably end up looking like flys. Cris actually sat down with a wild hive in her own backyard, and managed to capture the look of the honeybee both in flight and while standing still. Trust me, that is a lot harder than it sounds!

Then comes the information presented. Please understand, not only do I read to my daughter every night, but I am a bookworm myself, and have been since I could read. I have not seen a book written like this before.

First of all, each illustration has a rhyming couplet in large type, suitable for younger readers. The title is a perfect example of this. (In the Trees, Honey Bees!). More than this, though, is a more detailed explanation on each page, suitable for older readers who want to know more, and presented in a way that does not interfere with the overall look of the book. For a top-of-the-class reader, the last two pages of the book holds even more information, presented with actual photos, and complete with a recommended reading list.

My daughter loved the illustrations, like the couplets, and asked questions when I read the more detailed explanations to her. She was definitely engaged by this book. I am recommmending "In the Trees, Honey Bees" to my customers, and plan to carry it on our bookshelf.

This little book is a gem-the colors are so vibrant, and I just love the artwork. I showed it to an artist friend and his jaw dropped when he saw the honeycomb in perspective, saying "now there's an artist who knows how to draw - that's no computer generated image!" Don't tell any librarians, but I want to take out the pages and FRAME them! A great book to read to little ones, and I learned a lot, too-I really appreciate it when a children's book also has appeal for the adult who is reading it aloud, over, and over, and over, again! This one's a classic!

REVIEWED BY: Wayne S. Walker, reviewer with Stories for Children Magazine


Have you ever heard of someone being described as being "busy as a bee"? Well, exactly what do bees do to stay so busy? Entomologists tell us that there are three kinds of honeybees in a hive: workers, drones, and the queen. All the workers are female, all the drones are male, and the queen lays all the eggs. Worker bees begin as eggs and then become larvae that are fed by nurse bees. During their lives, the 15,000 to 30,000 worker bees in a hive have several different jobs. First, they collect nectar from older workers returning from the field. Then they begin producing wax to build honeycomb cells. Their next task is to guard the colony. Finally, they begin the work of flying to collect nectar and pollen.



In the Trees, Honey Bees is another "Sharing Nature with Children Book" from Dawn Publications. Author Lori Mortensen does a wonderful job of explaining all these facts about honeybees on a level that young children can easily understand by using a poetic style that kids will enjoy reading and featuring fun facts in sidebars throughout the book. Additionally, there are a couple of pages at the back entitled "The Buzz about Honeybees," which provides more information for curious young minds. Did you know that there are over 25,000 species of bees but that only nine species can make honey? The lifelike illustrations by Chris Arbo give the reader a close-up view of what goes on in a beehive. In the 1920s, the phrase "the bee's knees" was commonly used to mean "excellent or the highest quality." This book is certainly "the bee's knees"!

I've been thinking about bees a lot lately because of all the different kinds in my garden. This book does an excellent job of teaching kids (and grown-ups) about honey bees and what they do. There are lots of non-fiction books for kids that teach the basic information about those interesting insects, but this one gives more details than any others I've seen and does so in a style that will hold the attention of young readers. The illustrations are lovely and scientifically accurate, too. I'll probably never enjoy the taste of honey again without thinking of this book.

crisp,beautiful, whole page illustations....story easy to understand... short & detailed
version alike. kids love it!