Senor Parrot’s Perch

Each spring My wife fills the deck with flowers. We enjoy their beauty until the fall frosts kill them off. But we’re not the only ones. Bees are everywhere, flying about from flower to flower in the hunt for more pollen. Hundreds of bees. We’ve never been bothered by them and they’ve never seemed bothered by us. It’s a happy coexistence.

Bees, specificly Honey Bees, are the subject of Jay Hosler’s  graphic novel Clan Apis. Taking the graphic novel approach, author Jay Hosler encapsulated the life cycle of honey bees within a coming of age story and found an interesting and effective way to teach kids about the ecology of honey bees. Hosler’s approach is to imagine a hive, or clan, of honey bees endowed with human motivations, through them telling the amazing story of the Honey Bee. The illustration is excellent, lively, and entertaining. I’ve included a few panels from the book that I snagged from Hosler’s website for you to see.

It’s surprising how much actual detail and information Hosler conveys through this method, while keeping the interest in the story high. Beginning with a young larva and it’s older sister, Hosler details in clear and interesting detail the growth cycle and social lives of bees. As the young larva, Nyuki, grows into a young bee she absolutely buzzes with questions. Her older sister, Dvorah, is always there explaining to her the ways of bees and their jobs and duties.

 

Like a child eager to grow up, Nyuki is eager to find her own way, against the advice of her older sister, landing herself in the middle of dangerous straits. This opens the doorway to explain the environment that the bees find themselves in. Older sister Dvorah, along with a friend or two, guide Nyuki through each stage of life, passing along a trove of interesting information about the lives and ecology of honey bees along the way.

I’m not sure when this book was first published. The author’s website has different dates, ranging from 1998, 1999 and 2000, and my copy says it was printed in 2000. So it doesn’t include information about the current die-offs of the North American honey bee population, but that’s not a drawback for value of this text. In a classroom setting, the interest and sympathy for bees this book would generate would serve to motivate some interesting discussions about Colony Collapse Disorder, which is destroying large numbers of bees in the U.S.

Ascribing human-like motivation to animals and their evolutionary development is a common approach to scientific story-telling. It’s also one of my pet peeves. It’s a method scientists use to demonstrate the rationality of evolution – why nature takes the course that has led us to our current state. You might call it a Will to Evolve, and this is pure nonsense from a evolutionary science perspective. This is certainly the case with Hosler’s Clan Apis. He can be forgiven in this instance because he is in fact telling a fictional story, carefully constructed with science tossed in, and the story is meant to motivate an interest in the material. All of this he does very well.

The Book Smugglers reviewed Rapunzel’s Revenge today, and as is usual with them, their review was thorough and excellent, and they loved it. (Here’s the link to my review of Rapunzel’s Revenge). Reading their review, they let it be known that Team Hale (Shannon Hale, her husband Dean Hale, and not-at-all related Nathan Hale) have competed their sequel, Calamity Jack.

Oooohh, I thought, as my oldest daughter wandered into the kitchen for breakfast while I was reading The Book Smugglers’ review, she’ll will be excited to know about this! So I tell her, with an excited tone, and show her the cover image The Book Smugglers had posted. “Oh yeah, I knew”, she says. “How did you hear?”, says I. “I heard it a long time ago. I’ve known about that for a long time.”

Well, it didn’t really burn my toast, but I do hate being the last to know. (So, do I tell her that the newest graphic novel in the Kat & Mouse series,  Kat & Mouse Volume 4 (Kat and Mouse (Graphic Novels)),  is out in September? She’s been waiting for over a year and given up hope.)

Anyway, if you haven’t read Shannon Hale’s (and team Hale’s, to keep it short) graphic novel, Rapunzel’s Revenge, go out and get it today. It’s really aimed mostly at girls, but boys might get a few kicks out of it, too.

And here is a bit of the lowdown from the publisher on Calamity Jack, this snagged from The Book Smugglers review:

Jack thinks of himself as a criminal mastermind with an unfortunate amount of bad luck. A schemer, a trickster …maybe even a thief? But, of course, he’s not out for himself he’s trying to take the burden off his hardworking mum’s shoulders. She’d understand, right? He hopes she might even be proud. Then, one day, Jack chooses a target a little more …’giant’ than the usual, and as one little bean turns into a great big building-destroying beanstalk, his troubles really begin. But with help from Rapunzel and other eccentric friends, Jack just might out-swindle the evil giants and put his beloved city back in the hands of the people who live there …whilst catapulting them and the reader into another fantastical adventure.

Rapunzel’s Revenge is a graphic novel that had plenty of good press before it made it to the shelves of your local book store. Written by girl’s favorite Shannon Hale, along with her husband, Dean Hale, and illustrated by a non-relative coincidentally named Nathan Hale, it started out with an advantage. Later, it won the Cybils award for best graphic novel for the elementary/middle grades.

When I first heard about it, some time before the Cybils, I was excited to get it, thinking my girls would go for this tale. I had, out of curiosity picked up my oldest girl’s copy of Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale, and was very surprised that it was intelligent and well written, instead of some sort of boy-hungry clone. Now I’m a dad who doesn’t want his girls growing up to be vapid boy-hungry clones, so this left me predisposed to hunting out Rapunzel’s Revenge. Then, like a busy dad, I forgot about it.

I came across it a few weeks ago and finally picked it up. Oldest daughter couldn’t put it down, and ended up finishing it that day before she went to bed. She still lights up when I ask her about it. So I read it. It was great. Jammed with action and adventure on every page, it was a truly exciting revision of the well known fairly tale, and far more fun to read. The illustrations were an easy match for the well told tale.

And it is a revision. Somehow, Jack, of Jack and the Beanstalk fame – an occasionally cross-dressing Jack! – even gets messed up in the whole affair, too.

I generally dislike graphic novels/comic books. Usually they have a story not worth bothering to tell. If they have any value, its usually because of the illustrations, but even then, that’s not always the case. I love opera, and in many ways comic books are like opera. The music of opera is unparalleled in western civilization, but if you take the time to learn the story, that can wreck the whole experience because it can be so stupid. Take Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”, for example. The story is beyond stupid and confusing, but the music is so transcendent you can’t pry it out of your head with a two-by-four! Comic books are like that. The story is too often beyond stupid, but the drawing can somehow redeem the work.

However, Rapunzel’s Revenge is a great exception to the rule. It’s story is very well told. The characters are engaging and funny. The drawing is fantastic and imaginative. I have no qualms recommending this to anyone.

So, is someone’s birthday coming up? Find out if she’s read it, and if not, go buy this book and give it to her. (That’s right, “she”. I really don’t think many “he’s” are going to really be thankful, deep down in their hearts, if they were to receive this book. Buy him Artemis Fowl instead!)

Here’s an odd little video from YouTube: