THE BUMBLEBEE QUEEN

Sayre follows the life cycle of a bumblebee queen, as she emerges from her winter shelter, selects an abandoned mouse nest for a colony site, busily tends the first generation of eggs and larvae, then, at summer’s end, dies with her workers and drones, while the next generation of queens digs in to wait for spring. Throughout, she inserts additional details in smaller-type rubrics and adds “More Buzz about Bees” and “Good Bee-Havior,” at the end. Wynne draws the viewer in to her precisely detailed, close-up natural scenes by posing queen and offspring looking up from the page to make eye contact—but she follows the author in steering clear of anthropomorphic inventions. Capped by a multimedia resource list, this makes nourishing fare for young observers of nature. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-8)