Entertaining reading for budding apiarists and armchair nature enthusiasts.
An intimate look at one woman’s experience with beekeeping.
After helping a friend of a friend with his bees, British writer Jukes decided to get a colony of her own even though she knew little about them. “I hadn’t even realized…that honeybees are different from bumblebees,” she writes, “that there are over twenty thousand species of bee in the world, and only a fraction of them make honey.” The author had a woodworker build her a special hive so she could establish her colony in a wind-protected section of her back garden. While she waited for the appropriate time to begin her new hobby, she plunged headlong into the complex history of bees and beekeeping through the centuries, and she shares her extensive research with readers. Though informative, these elements are occasionally dry. Fortunately, Jukes juxtaposes this history with her ongoing interactions with her hive, which brings her tale back to life. Readers share in her concerns about cold weather and how the new colony is adjusting to their nontraditional hive, rejoice in the abundance of new bees, and worry as the hive moves closer and closer to the swarming phase. The author clearly conveys the necessity of dedication, focus, and calm when handling bees, and she palpably portrays the moment when she was able to fully let go of her day-to-day anxieties and concentrate solely on her charges. She also interweaves a late-blooming romance into her story, which further sweetens the narrative. Throughout the book, Jukes portrays her experiences with vivid imagination and a spirit that encourages readers to think deeper about a creature that is vital to all life on this planet. “The honeybees opened me out,” she writes, “led me into a new understanding of the world and my place in it….Flowers, bees, weather, people—they’re all connected, all part of a larger ecosystem.”
Entertaining reading for budding apiarists and armchair nature enthusiasts.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4786-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
