A human boy makes the acquaintance of (anthropomorphized) honeybees Beatrice and Bella, who give him a magic pair of striped trousers and a furry jacket that shrink him to the size of a bee and allow him to fly. The trio heads inside the beehive, where it's hot and dark but smells "LOVELY" (of honey, Beatrice explains). The boy meets the queen (who likes his suit) and witnesses another bee doing the "waggle dance," giving flower-finding directions. Everyone flies off, eventually locating a patch of strawberries whose flowers contain the delicious, sugary nectar the bees will take home and use to make honey. In the city, however, it's hard to find flowers, so when the adventure is over and the boy is his regular size again, he plants lots of seeds and flowers. "Because every flower counts...for every little bee!" The message is clear but not at all heavy-handed, and the magic-transformation element is child-appealing, both in the text and in the simple, bold, cut-paper and ink illustrations. The boy is, delightfully, always recognizably a child in a bee suit. Particularly entertaining is the illustration in which a little girl notices him flying toward a dandelion growing in a crack in the sidewalk and tells her mother, who in classic adult fashion is too focused on catching the bus to look. Martha V. Parravano July/August 2022 p.104(c) Copyright 2022. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Sitting beside a potted flower, a boy's intrigued by the bees and blue beehive box nearby--"What do you do in that hive all day? Where do you go when you leave?" He gets an unexpected opportunity to find out when two bees provide him with a little bee suit, and suddenly, he's honeybee-size. In black-and-yellow-striped pants and a furry, winged jacket, he enters the hive with bee companions Beatrice and Bella. There he discovers bees "cleaning, building . . . feeding the bee babies"; meets the queen; and hears the buzzing of the "waggle dance," alerting the hive to flowers outside. The boy then flies with the bees to the flowers and learns about pollen and nectar. Eventually, it's time to return the bee suit--and become full-size again--but his experience inspires him to plant more flowers for his new bee pals to enjoy. Delightful, cut-paper collage illustrations depict the winsome with bright hues and whimsical details. While the potential risk for stings isn't mentioned, the lively text and upbeat approach offer an entertaining introduction to some honeybee characteristics in a book well suited for reading aloud.

A little boy who enjoys observing honeybees has a magical adventure with them. The narrator, a pale-skinned tot with close-cropped black hair, sits on an overturned flowerpot, gazing at the bees flying in and out of a bright blue hive. Inexplicably but delightfully, two bees have brought him an itty-bitty bee suit that shrinks him to "the size of a teeny-weeny honeybee." Bella and Beatrice usher him past the guards and into the hive, which is dark but "smell[s] LOVELY." Scaling the comb, he observes workers feeding beatifically smiling larvae, meets the Queen, and witnesses the waggle dance that, Bella informs him, "shows us where to find flowers." Following a brief flight--his suit is equipped with tiny wings--he helps his friends gather strawberry nectar and dandelion pollen. Taking the suit off restores him to his full size, and the next day he thoughtfully "plant[s] lots of seeds and flowers" for his new friends. Readers accustomed to Voake's flowing ink-and-wash paintings will note a departure here; these illustrations are constructed out of cut paper embellished with her familiar brushy lines. The focus is on whimsy rather than verisimilitude--these bees have just four legs, for instance--but this is a fantasy, after all. (This book was reviewed digitally.) A cozy, nonthreatening preschoolers' introduction to some honeybee basics. (Picture book. 3-5) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.