The Honey Makers

by Gail Gibbons, Gail Gibbons (Illustrator)

Overview

How sweet it is. Thousands of bees visited more than one million flowers to gather the nectar that went into that one-pound jar of honey. Here's the buzz on how these remarkable insects work together to create this amazing food.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780688175313
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	04/28/2000
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	19,969
Product dimensions:	10.87(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)
Lexile:	770L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Gail Gibbons, author of more than one hundred books, is the winner of the Washington Post/Children’s Book Guild Award for her overall contribution to children’s nonfiction literature. Called a “master of picture book nonfiction” by ALA Booklist, Ms. Gibbons has a special talent for making complex subjects understandable and entertaining for young readers.

Gail Gibbons, author of more than one hundred books, is the winner of the Washington Post/Children’s Book Guild Award for her overall contribution to children’s nonfiction literature. Called a “master of picture book nonfiction” by ALA Booklist, Ms. Gibbons has a special talent for making complex subjects understandable and entertaining for young readers.

Editorial Reviews

This book tells everything that any reader would want to know about honeybees. It discusses each job in the hive as well as the job of a beekeeper. Facts, such as it takes nectar from a million flowers to make one pound of honey, are sure to amaze children of all ages. The colorful watercolor pictures explain the complex hive system.

Children's Literature - Rae Valabek

Did you know that it takes the nectar from a million flowers to make one pound of honey? Gail Gibbons provides all the answers in this detailed picture story of honey from bee to beekeeper. Find out about the "Dances of the Honeybees." Terrific pictures make the simile "as busy as a bee" believable.

Children's Literature - Jan Lieberman

Although most folks buy it in a simple jar, honey is nothing short of miraculous in the way it is manufactured—bees use nectar from over a million flowers just to make one pound of the stuff.

It's that kind of fact that pops up frequently as Gibbons (Country Fair, 1994, etc.) investigates the lives of these industrious "manufacturers" and their relationship to humans through beekeeping. She follows a worker bee from birth through its many jobs: house bee, nurse, wax maker, guard, and forager. Queens, drones, and life within the hive are all covered in detail. Outside the hive, the beekeepers are busy, too, setting up the hive, maintaining it, and collecting and processing the honey. Gibbons includes sample pages for each month from a beekeeper's diary—even in the cold months of December and January, there is work to be done. Bright pictures back up the text in a slightly looser—still highly detailed—line than is Gibbons's typical style. She incorporates some of the clichés about bees into the book, giving real meaning to beeline and busy as a bee. A final page rounds up some random tidbits, covering everything from stings to honey flavors. Bee-utiful.

Kirkus Reviews