Bee Smart! Books about Pollinators for Kids

As National Pollinator Week comes to a close, discover books about bees and other pollinators to enjoy with your children and to help kids understand the roles pollinators play in our environment. And then on Monday, June 24, sign them up for Summer of Learning so they can continue to Explore Your World!

 

The Honeybee by Kirsten Hall
Told in rhyming couplets, the poem of this book follows bees as they search for nectar, gather pollen, and make the nectar into honey. For readers preschool-grade 2.

#BookBingoNW2019: Science

Looking for something to fill in your Book Bingo “Science” square?  Something that will stretch your brain? How about a fascinating page-turner that somehow makes complex topics easy to grasp? Here are some titles that bear no resemblance to a dusty chemistry textbook:

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes by Adam Rutherford
The first complete sequencing of the human genome in 2003 (as part of The Human Genome Project) opened the floodgates to voluminous scientific data which are changing our understanding of the human species. Rutherford, a British geneticist and science writer, explains how recent genetic research upends much of what we thought we knew about evolution, migration, race and more. He writes in an engaging and at times humorous style. According to the New York Times Book Review, this book is “Nothing less than a tour de force–a heady amalgam of science, history, a little bit of anthropology and plenty of nuanced, captivating storytelling.”

Celebrate pollinators in June!

Learn more about pollinators, how to attract them into your garden, and reflect on what can be done to protect them and the work they do in our ecosystems. Of course it’s a subject always of interest, but June 17-23, 2019 is National Pollinator Week, designated by the U.S. Senate as a celebration of pollinators such as bees, butterflies, bats, and more. Here are some books and resources on bees and other pollinators.

Our Native Bees: North America’s Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Save Them by Paige Embry
Organized by bee, Embry provides an overview of the various native bee species in the U.S, covering the nesting, foraging and mating habits of each bee. Embry visits the owners of almond groves, cherry orchards, blueberry fields and more to better understand different bees. Written in a chatty, folksy tone with many high-quality photos, this is a lovely book to dip in and out of.

Birds, Bees, and Butterflies

The first Spring in our new house was spent figuring out where we wanted things and tackling the things we didn’t – I battled sticker bushes and morning glory, we moved garden beds, and got a patio poured. This year all that hard work started coming together. I planted vegetables, we got patio furniture, and got some flower beds organized – but like all good library nerds I had to do research first.

I’ve always wanted my yard to be habitat friendly so when I weeded I didn’t just take out everything that’s considered a weed. I kept clover and bachelor’s button despite their bad reputation. I also let things happen naturally with random plants that popped up on their own like lupine, hyacinths, daffodils, and a calla lilly! We added lavender, rosemary, borage, and mint for bees. I also, made little rain gardens and added bird feeders and from last year we have foxgloves and crocosmia for the hummingbirds.

I’ve seen so much new wildlife come into our yard lately; looking forward to what each year brings! Here are a few books in our collection that helped me out:

If You Liked Yuval Harari’s Sapiens

Who are we? What are we? Why are we here? Where will we wind up? These are just a few of the questions asked – and answered – in Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, a thought-provoking and opinionated international bestseller about nothing less than the humanity, start to finish.

I’ve long been intrigued with human origins, fascinated by the staggeringly brief history of our remarkable and problematic species. Our diminutive presence across both the vast reaches of outer space, and aeons of earth’s history, provides a salutary humbling perspective to our often ego- and anthropocentric lives. Then there are all of our curious hominid siblings, outlasted by only us – unless you believe in Bigfoot. With this keen interest in the rapidly evolving field of paleoanthropology, I was thrilled to suddenly find so many of our patrons enjoying Harari’s book, and wanting to learn more.