What The World Needs Now: Bees
By Cheryl Rosebush
Illustrated by Zuzana Svobodova
Rated: 5 stars *****
First, I took part in the cover reveal. Now I have even more for you. I am starting off the blog to a review of this wonderful book for 5-7 year olds. It’s a sweet, well illustrated story mixed with facts in various ways that will both entertain and add to children’s knowledge.
Thanks to Freshly Press for supplying me with a copy of the book and to Love Books Group for inviting me to review.
Find out more in the blurb and review and discover more about this intrepid author below.
Blurb
Inside the sprawling forests of Ontario, Canada lives a friendly black bear named Melly. One of Melly’s favourite things to do is EAT! And many of the delicious fruits she snacks on wouldn’t grow without the help of some very important little forest creatures.
What the World Needs Now: Bees! explores the vital role busy, busy bees play in helping plants to grow the food people and animals love to eat.
Review
Bees… We all know how important bees are to the environment and to the human and animal race. This bright and very cute book tells a story as to why in a way that children can follow… Children can follow the black bear – Melly, who is in Ontario, Canada. It is however quite a universal, environmental story.
It is fun and cute to explore with Melly through the forest to the berries she eats onto the flowers she plays in to the friends she meets. Throughout it also tells the story of the busy bees and how they help pollinate flowers and food and why that is important. Children can also learn in little segments, away from the main story, in neat fact boxes, about the bear too. There is minor trepidation when chemical pesticides are used, until natural sprays are used instead. It’s an absolutely great story that is pitched very well for 5-7 year olds. They get a cute story, plus facts along the way and at the back there is a great page about bees from around the world and other wildlife species that can be found in Ontario, Canada.
About the Author
I was born and raised in Southern Ontario, Canada in the cities of Burlington and St. Catharines. Long before the internet and mobile phones (now I’m aging myself!), my childhood was spent in forests and parks, on bike rides, and playing hide and seek until the streetlights came on. My family did comical Griswold-style road trips in wood-paneled station wagons. We spent summers swimming in friends’ backyards. These are my very fortunate roots.
I knew from an early age that my destiny would take me far from Southern Ontario. I graduated high school and moved to Montreal to study international politics at McGill University. The subject fascinated me, but as graduation approached, I realized I didn’t know what I wanted to do with a degree in international politics. I didn’t want to become a lawyer. I didn’t want to become a politician or civil servant. The media industry, on the other hand, intrigued me.
The West Coast of Canada also intrigued me. So, after graduating McGill, I packed up again, moved to Vancouver and took the first media job I could get at a local Top 40 radio station (Z.95.3) in Vancouver. Best job. Great bosses. I learned so much. But after a couple of years there, the winds of change came calling again.
September 11, 2001. In a heartbeat, Z95.3 went from playing Britney Spears to reporting up-to-the-minute information on the local, national and international fallout of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. In that moment, I knew I had found my calling. I wanted to do something that was needed on a good day, and needed even more on a bad day. I wanted to become a full-time journalist.
So, I packed my bags again (a running theme in my life), and moved to Ottawa, Ontario to do my Masters of Journalism. Another incredible two years culminated in me getting a research internship with the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) in London, England. That position helped me land back in Montreal for a second chapter there as local news reporter for the CBC. While I was there, I wore just about every hat you could in CBC’s radio and TV newsrooms. Depending on the day, I was a researcher, producer, reporter, or online writer. I even filled in for the weather reports every once in a while.
Aged 21 Robin was all set to become a cavalry officer; aged 21 and a half, he found himself working as an assistant gravedigger in south London wondering where it all went wrong. Robin has gone on to start and run over a dozen successful businesses from dog- sitting to cigars, tuition to translation. The list is quite exhausting. Robin is married with three young children. He spends his time between Pau in the Pyrenées and Henley-on- Thames.
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