UnBEElievables: Honeybee Poems and Paintings

UnBEElievables: Honeybee Poems and Paintings
by Douglas Florian
Beach Lane Books, 2012. Unpaged. Picture Book

Actually, Douglas Florian's UnBEElievables is three, three, three books in one. Not only a truly funky picture book, it is also a book of poetry, and a factual book about bees. The name "bees" lends itself to extravagant punning and Florian is a master: "From egg I hatch in just three days,/Bee-ginning my new larval phase./I dwell in a six-sided cell./My cozy home bee-fits me well./Then as a pupa, how I change,/Bee-coming something else, so strange!/My body slowly grows until/I'm truly un-bee-lievable!" Each poem in the book has a description/explanation of what goes on amongst real bees in the hive and out, and Florian's simultaneously sophisticated and childlike paintings are just the bee's knees, if you'll excuse the expression.

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