AUDIENCE: This GN is aimed at young adults. I read this to my five-year-old and even he loved it, laughing wickedly at some of the humor (like when sassy young Nyuki asks the queen bee, “Why is your butt so big?”). It may stretch the vocabulary of the under-12 set, with words like “metamorphosis” (naturally) and “hedonism.” Anyone who is interested in nature will enjoy it.

SYNOPSIS: The story opens with a genesis myth being told by a nurse honeybee to a larva. The larva is wisecracking Nyuki, the main character. The nurse bee, Dvorah, caps Nyuki’s cell so she can undergo metamorphosis. Nyuki emerges from the cell as a mature bee at an exciting time for the hive — just before a swarm. Nyuki joins the old queen and the swarming bees, leaving the hive of her birth. Impulsively, she volunteers to be one of the scouts looking for a site for the new hive. Her search leads her to encounters with a preying mantis, and a crab spider named Thom, who nearly kill her. Saved by a dung beetle named Sisyphus, she rejoins the swarm just in time for their trip to the new hive. Once settled, Nyuki sticks to jobs inside the hive, such as comb construction. Traumatized by her bad experience in the outdoors, she resists suggestions that she take an outside job. Dvorah at last manages to convince her to try leaving the hive again, in perhaps the most affecting scene in the book. Finally, Nyuki becomes a forager bee, and makes friends with a flower named Bloomington. But she must also come to grips with the harsh fact of a bee’s short lifespan…

The volume concludes with “Bee Lines,” a set of interesting notes about bees, and “Killer Bee,” a six-page autobiographical story about how Jay Hosler discovered he had become allergic to beestings. There is an associated website, at
www.jayhosler.com/clanapis.html.

EVALUATION: Don’t label this an educational book. Yes, it is very educational, handily summarizing both the essentials of honeybee life and some gee-whiz facts. But its presentation of all this material reminds me of the comments of Shakespearean scholar
A. R. Humprheys: in noting that the Bard stole liberally from existing works, sometimes copying their text nearly word for word, he expresses awe that “Shakespeare could follow common prose so closely yet produce fine poetry.” Some of the lines in Clan Apis would be right at home in a young adult’s science book, and yet Hosler has woven them so well into the dialog and the narrative that there is no pedagogical effect. (One minor slip in this area is when Zambur, the drone of little social skill, proclaims “of the hundreds of drones that gather, [the queen] will accept only 10-15 for mates.” Spell out ALL the numbers next time!)

The art is crisp and the insects are anatomically correct for the most part. As a larva, Nyuki grins with a mouthful of teeth on the book’s cover, but other than that, Hosler achieves a remarkable level of expressiveness using only the insect’s natural features. (Indeed, it’s downright amazing how expressive Hosler can make an eyeless grub!) To express astonisment, mandibles gape open horizontally (the equivalent of a human’s dropped jaw), and this works quite well. Hosler uses antennae as surrogate eyebrows to achieve emotional expression, and occasionally in more whimsical ways — such as Nyuki’s antennae taking on a question-mark shape when she is puzzled. He always makes it easy to tell the bees apart; for example, Dvorah is distinguished by a broken antenna. The creative page layouts enhance the story, especially in the waggle dance scene.

The story moves along briskly enough to keep the attention of any reader, and seems fairly short to me at 136 pages. Personally, I would have liked more detail in some areas, such as at the beginning of chapter four: the swarm is heading for the new hive site at the end of chapter three, but when chapter four opens they are already somewhat settled into the new site. It would have been nice to see more details of how the new hive was established. Hosler’s story is an apian Watership Down and I wouldn’t have minded if he’d made it as long as that rabbit classic. On the plus side, though, the length makes it much less daunting for younger readers. This book would be the perfect gift for the young nature lover in your family, or for any youngster that you would like to become a nature lover. Oh, and read it yourself, too.