The Honeybee – Kirsten Hall and Isabelle Arsenault
The Honeybee by Kirsten Hall, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault / ISBN 9781481469975 / 48-page hardcover, 8.75 x 11 inches, from Atheneum Books
***
“Kirsten Hall (“The Jacket”) teams up with the gently magnificent illustrator Isabelle Arsenault (“Cloth Lullaby,” “Colette’s Lost Pet”) to bring readers the story of one year, from spring to spring, with the honeybees of a single hive. Hall’s charming text proceeds in lightly cadenced lines…. Arsenault’s illustrations capture something of the alien vision of bees — bees see a ‘bee purple’ in flowers that is invisible to us — through a neon orange that she uses sparingly amid paler gouache, pencil and ink landscapes. Her flowers and grasses are drawn impressionistically, while the bees themselves are made more emotionally legible with cartoonish eyes and even smiles. Children will love tracing the erratic paths of the honeybees, and come away with a not too distorted sense of the little honey factory inside the unprepossessing, and previously terrifying, hive. The hexagons of honeycomb, as drawn by Arsenault, seem so perfect as to be fanciful precisely when they are fact.” ― The New York Times Book Review
Buzz from flower to flower with a sweet honeybee in this timely, clever, and breathtakingly gorgeous picture book from critically acclaimed author Kirsten Hall and award-winning illustrator Isabelle Arsenault.
With zooming, vibrant verse by Kirsten Hall and buzzy, beautiful illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault, this celebration of the critically important honeybee is a honey-sweet treasure of a picture book.
