UnBEElievables

Working in gouache, colored pencils, and collage on paper bags, Florian evokes the world of bees with repetitive patterning that cleverly references their honeycombs and the fields of flowers they frequent as well as the bees themselves. His humorous rhythmic verse, too, echoes bee behavior, as much with sound as with sense. A paragraph of more straightforward facts elucidates each spread. Bib.

Working in gouache, colored pencils, and collage on paper bags, Florian evokes the world of bees with repetitive patterning that cleverly references their honeycombs and the fields of flowers they frequent as well as the bees themselves -- worker bees are sisters hatched from eggs laid two thousand at a crack. His rhythmic verse, too, echoes bee behavior, as much with sound as with sense ("I'm a nectar collector. / Make wax to the max. / A beehive protector. / I never relax"). Puns and other wordplay enliven the text ("Why are we full / Of fuzz and fuzz? / Bee-cuzz bee-cuzz / The fuzz the fuzz / Helps pollen stick / To uzz to uzz"). A paragraph of more straightforward facts elucidates each spread, but the real energy here is in the deceptively casual art. A regal queen bee looks almost human, and drones resemble feckless kids, while captions of discretely scattered capitals provide as much texture as information. Though hardly a first source on bees, it's an offbeat and attractive book, completed with a "BEEbliography." joanna