This book follows the journey that a honeybee from hive to flower to making honey. The poetry is lyrical and the beautifully illustrated pictures bring this journey to life. The combination of mediums in the pictures make the pictures unique and appealing to children. Through the pages and poetry of this book a reader can learn about the journey and hard work honeybees embark in every year to make honey, helping the reader find appreciation and wonder in what the honeybee can accomplish every year. The pacing of the words work together like the activity of a worker bee moving through the season and the art is perfectly paired with the language. Through these pages you can also see what different jobs and the intricate ways that bees do their work. Rich in word-play, rhythm, and fun that explains the lives of honeybees in a book-length poem and the illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault are fully a part of the poem as they mix the words into the drawings to add even more energy and buzz to this beautiful book.

The honeybee is great picture book to capture the environment and describe the habits and the life of a bee. The endless onomatopoeia and the use of speak bubbles to dialogs facts. I could use this book to describe how bees are essential to the environment and the importance of the little task bees do such as communicate with each other, create honey, and the survival of the winter. The book does not go too in depth which creates the opportunity to ask the students to inference what the author mean and might happen next. The book has the following rewards, Florida reading Association Children's Book Award, Mitten Award Top Ten Title and Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Title. ( )

I love the bright colours! So wonderful on a cold and grey January day! And of course Isabelle Arsenault is among my Apostles of Art: she can do no wrong and I simply revere her. She was the reason I borrowed this book from the library to begin with, as I hadn't kept up with her in a while and have borrowed a stack of some of her work I've managed to miss (quite a lot of it, apparently as she's a busy artist!).

This is a book originally written for beginner readers, but adults like me will be delighted by the charming watercolour illustrations showing fields of flowers which are punched up with touches of fluorescent orange to really make the colours pop. The story about how bees go about collecting pollen and creating honey is simply told, but at the very end there's an important message about the importance of bees and their environmental impact. 4.5 stars for how cheerful the illustrations are. ( )

American author Kirsten Hall and French-Canadian illustrator Isabelle Arsenault join forces in this beautiful picture-book tribute to the honeybee. In simple, poetic text, the activities of the bee, as it works toward producing honey, are set out. From gathering nectar from the flowers to filling the honeycomb, the honeybee keeps busy, always flying around, always buzzing, always working. Most of all, though: always helping the world's pollination process...

As is clear from Hall's afterword, the subject of honeybees and their important role in maintaining ecological balance is dear to this author's heart, something that comes through loud and clear in her text. The narrative reads very well - "Four tiny wings; / they buzz and they sing. / They're clapping and flapping; / the busy bee's lapping" - and manages to be both informative and beautifully descriptive. The artwork, done in ink, gouache and pencil, is absolutely gorgeous! Everything from the color palette and the general composition of each page, to the use of lines to indicate motion, is very well done indeed. That moment when the narrative forcefully names the bee, and there is a massive two-page painting, is a wonderful example of text and image working together as they should, building a sense of excitement and wonder. Highly recommended, both to my fellow Hall and Arsenault fans - I admire both, myself - and to anyone looking for picture-books about bees. ( )