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The Summer We Saved the Bees by Robin Stevenson (Orca $9.95)
There's nothing like jamming a stocky, unwilling pre-teen boy into a bumblebee costume to generate first-rate literary tension.
Especially when said boy is being strong-armed into staging public performances in the interests of communicating a dire eco-political message.
Oh, it's dire, all right. The bees are dying, and nobody seems able to stop it. Twelve-year-old Wolf Everett, protagonist of Robin Stevenson's The Summer We Saved the Bees knows all about it; he did a website project on it last year. What Wolf didn't anticipate was his activist mother exploding his project into a summer-long guerrilla-theatre-fest in an attempt to spread a distinctly alarmist message across the country.
As an environmental activist, Wolf's mum Jade thinks it's up to her family-her boyfriend Curtis, Wolf, his step-sister Violet, and twin half-sisters Whisper and Saffron-to save the bees. And it's not like Wolf can argue; while he's ticked at having been pulled out of school and crammed into a stinky, biodiesel-powered van with five other people for weeks on end, his problems pale in comparison to the epic crop failure and widespread starvation that his mother is prophesying.
Or so he keeps telling himself. As the family's trip hitches and stalls its way across British Columbia, the emotional toll erodes Wolf's belief that they're actually doing the right thing. His friends back home think his mother's a crazy zealot; the van breaks down almost as soon as the tires hit the road; 14-year-old Violet seethes under what she sees as a prison sentence (not even her tagalong boyfriend, Ty, can skip her out of her funk); and six-year-old Whisper-a quiet kid by nature-stops talking altogether.
After a brief performance tour of Vancouver, where the family stays with friends from Jade's university days, the van breaks down in Chilliwack, leaving the group stranded, broke and camped out on a friendly stranger's lawn. On the heels of their Vancouver gig, Wolf draws the line on dressing up like a bee, and defends Whisper from having to do so as well.
As his mother presses single-mindedly on with the performances, Wolf begins to doubt both her information (maybe things aren't as bad as Jade claims?) and her motives (why does she care more about the bees than about us?). Whisper is unwell, nobody is happy, and Jade doesn't even hear Wolf when he tries to tell her it's not working.
The tension mounts until finally Wolf, Violet and Ty hatch a plan to better protect the twins from their mother's blind crusade: they will catch the Greyhound to Nelson, and ferry the twins to the safety of their paternal grandmother. What they aren't banking on is their grandmother's unwillingness to be a co-conspirator in their plot.
While the book-Robin Stevenson's eighteenth since her first book in 2007-is anchored in the bees' plight, the award-winning author acknowledges it's less about the bees than it is about families, and how we can lose sight of what's happening right now because we're so focused on our fears about the future.
"I think it's easy to underestimate how much a parent's world view can affect a child,"; says Stevenson. "Kids need to feel safe, secure, and protected-not protected from the world or from learning, but protected from being overwhelmed by the concerns and fears of the adults in their lives.";
It's important to foster a sense of hopefulness and optimism about our children's future and the future of their world, she says, rather than constantly wringing our hands about the mess that surrounds us.
Conflicted, tender, and frustrated as hell, Wolf is a truly likable character whose heart and values are squarely in the right place. Peppered with real facts about bee depopulation-how there are no bees in one part of China and workers have to hand-pollinate plants; how the pesticides our current monoculture practices demand are decimating bee populations-the book gently educates while at the same time raising key ethical questions.
Does the threat of crop failure trump the wellbeing of a family? Is it better to save the bees, or to restore some balance to the family in order to ease Whisper's anxiety? Sure, the twins look adorable in their bee costumes, but Wolf feels that forcing them to hand out flyers to strangers on the street is not worth Whisper's meltdowns.
Wolf just wishes his mother could see it, too. But she's too far gone, her head firmly in the clouds of her singular mission.
"I think adults and kids will take different things away from this book,"; says Stevenson. "I hope adults will be thinking and talking about how we can support kids who are interested in activism without letting adult agendas become the driving force.";
Perfect for a class novel study, The Summer We Saved the Bees will spark conversations about family relationships as well as how to live with a lighter footprint. But it will also open the door to talking about environmental concerns in a way that supports hopefulness and a belief in human ingenuity and resilience, rather than simply adding to the fast-growing epidemic of childhood anxiety.
9781459808348
Alex Van Tol's latest book is Aliens Among Us: Invasive
Animals and Plants In B.C. (Royal B.C. Museum).
Especially when said boy is being strong-armed into staging public performances in the interests of communicating a dire eco-political message.
Oh, it's dire, all right. The bees are dying, and nobody seems able to stop it. Twelve-year-old Wolf Everett, protagonist of Robin Stevenson's The Summer We Saved the Bees knows all about it; he did a website project on it last year. What Wolf didn't anticipate was his activist mother exploding his project into a summer-long guerrilla-theatre-fest in an attempt to spread a distinctly alarmist message across the country.
As an environmental activist, Wolf's mum Jade thinks it's up to her family-her boyfriend Curtis, Wolf, his step-sister Violet, and twin half-sisters Whisper and Saffron-to save the bees. And it's not like Wolf can argue; while he's ticked at having been pulled out of school and crammed into a stinky, biodiesel-powered van with five other people for weeks on end, his problems pale in comparison to the epic crop failure and widespread starvation that his mother is prophesying.
Or so he keeps telling himself. As the family's trip hitches and stalls its way across British Columbia, the emotional toll erodes Wolf's belief that they're actually doing the right thing. His friends back home think his mother's a crazy zealot; the van breaks down almost as soon as the tires hit the road; 14-year-old Violet seethes under what she sees as a prison sentence (not even her tagalong boyfriend, Ty, can skip her out of her funk); and six-year-old Whisper-a quiet kid by nature-stops talking altogether.
After a brief performance tour of Vancouver, where the family stays with friends from Jade's university days, the van breaks down in Chilliwack, leaving the group stranded, broke and camped out on a friendly stranger's lawn. On the heels of their Vancouver gig, Wolf draws the line on dressing up like a bee, and defends Whisper from having to do so as well.
As his mother presses single-mindedly on with the performances, Wolf begins to doubt both her information (maybe things aren't as bad as Jade claims?) and her motives (why does she care more about the bees than about us?). Whisper is unwell, nobody is happy, and Jade doesn't even hear Wolf when he tries to tell her it's not working.
The tension mounts until finally Wolf, Violet and Ty hatch a plan to better protect the twins from their mother's blind crusade: they will catch the Greyhound to Nelson, and ferry the twins to the safety of their paternal grandmother. What they aren't banking on is their grandmother's unwillingness to be a co-conspirator in their plot.
While the book-Robin Stevenson's eighteenth since her first book in 2007-is anchored in the bees' plight, the award-winning author acknowledges it's less about the bees than it is about families, and how we can lose sight of what's happening right now because we're so focused on our fears about the future.
"I think it's easy to underestimate how much a parent's world view can affect a child,"; says Stevenson. "Kids need to feel safe, secure, and protected-not protected from the world or from learning, but protected from being overwhelmed by the concerns and fears of the adults in their lives.";
It's important to foster a sense of hopefulness and optimism about our children's future and the future of their world, she says, rather than constantly wringing our hands about the mess that surrounds us.
Conflicted, tender, and frustrated as hell, Wolf is a truly likable character whose heart and values are squarely in the right place. Peppered with real facts about bee depopulation-how there are no bees in one part of China and workers have to hand-pollinate plants; how the pesticides our current monoculture practices demand are decimating bee populations-the book gently educates while at the same time raising key ethical questions.
Does the threat of crop failure trump the wellbeing of a family? Is it better to save the bees, or to restore some balance to the family in order to ease Whisper's anxiety? Sure, the twins look adorable in their bee costumes, but Wolf feels that forcing them to hand out flyers to strangers on the street is not worth Whisper's meltdowns.
Wolf just wishes his mother could see it, too. But she's too far gone, her head firmly in the clouds of her singular mission.
"I think adults and kids will take different things away from this book,"; says Stevenson. "I hope adults will be thinking and talking about how we can support kids who are interested in activism without letting adult agendas become the driving force.";
Perfect for a class novel study, The Summer We Saved the Bees will spark conversations about family relationships as well as how to live with a lighter footprint. But it will also open the door to talking about environmental concerns in a way that supports hopefulness and a belief in human ingenuity and resilience, rather than simply adding to the fast-growing epidemic of childhood anxiety.
9781459808348
Alex Van Tol's latest book is Aliens Among Us: Invasive
Animals and Plants In B.C. (Royal B.C. Museum).
Submitted on August 31, 2015 in By David.
