Swarm of Bees
Lemony Snicket and Rilla Alexander
Andersen Press

This is the second ‘Swarm of Bees’ to arrive at my house in the last couple of weeks. A real swarm dropped down our chimney the other day and after an initial invasion of our bedroom, the bees are now safely at home nesting in the chimney flue.

In the story, a boy throws a tomato at a nest of bees. Why, one wonders. He certainly looks pretty angry as he walks along pulling that cart. But to take his anger out on the bees is surely not acceptable behaviour. His action causes the nest to swing, and disturbed, the bees come swarming out: do they do so to protect their queen perhaps?

Through the town fly the bees with the narrator wondering about possible targets for their stings. A sailor? No he’s spent nine months at sea and is rushing home to give his mother a hug. Maybe a mother, a bricklayer,

chefs, a cat or residents of a flat: using repetition the narrator considers each potential target and provides reasons why not.

What about the boy? We then see that he in fact is pelting each of the potential targets with tomatoes; they’re all feeling indignant and chase the boy across a tomato-splattered town layout

in a sequence of wonderfully buzzy spreads.

Eventually the beekeeper calms the swarm and catches them in his bee sack.

The boy meanwhile, is pacified by an embrace from a parent who doesn’t chastise,

but the narrator echoes his thoughts with ‘It can feel good to be angry. / it can feel better to stop.’

Clever use of metaphor for the feelings of the characters, combined with the exuberant illustrations provoke ideas about anger management and the other emotions the characters exhibit in Rilla Alexander’s bold, mixed media scenes, providing a nice balance of humour and emotional charge.

The entire book is thoughtfully designed from cover to cover with the story starting and concluding on the endpapers.

An interesting, thought provoking book to share as a prelude to a circle time discussion with young listeners.