One day I have an email in my inbox that says I have been given access to an online reader of Little Bee V01 The Buzz About the Party by Danny Neville and illustrator Colleen McKeown. It is due early March 2026 and the image of the cover was there as well. There was a lot of technical stuff (you know words) about how great it was and other information about it, but I try not to read too much about things so I am not biased against them.
And it probably is a good thing that I did not read a lot about Bee and Friends before starting it. I liked having no real expectations about what was going to happen, who the people were and what was going to happen. I like learning about the fact that Bee has two dads, that Mother’s Day was going to be difficult for several of the children in the class that year, and learning about the characters as Bee learns about them. Things are nice, okay, nothing fancy but that is fine. Maybe things are not WOW BEST BOOK EVER but I enjoyed the experience of reading it. I am not totally the audience for this book, but I can appreciate it and know that there is an audience for it.
The artwork is easy, simple, and fits the scene and mood. You know that the bully is a ‘girly girl’ with her pretty dress. You see how the characters are diverse. And the settings are familiar. We all have a school, playground and a kitchen at home. We deal with the ins and outs of friendships, embarrassing parents and in the meantime we see ourselves or classmates on the pages.
