ACCESS DIGITIZED EDITION
Guide/Reviews Database
LITERATURE
Novesky, Amy

The Poet and the Bees: A Story of the Seasons Sylvia Plath Kept Bees

32 pp. | Viking | February, 2025 | Trade ISBN 9780593526392 $18.99 | Ebook ISBN 9780593526408 $10.99
(2) K-3 Illustrated by Jessica Love. Novesky provides a snapshot of Plath (1932–1963) inspired by her poems and letters about her brief experience with beekeeping. The text moves through the seasons, beginning and ending with spring, in spare, graceful free-verse poems with hints of rhyme and steady internal rhythm and occasionally incorporating (in italics) Plath's own words and phrases: "It is the golden season. / Everything glowing as if lit from within. / The poet can glow and burn, / as if lit from within, too." Practical details about beekeeping are integrated, such as proper garb, how to check a hive and frame, getting stung, pollination, and the production of honey. Love's watercolor illustrations depict Plath (and her braided "crown" of hair) caring for bees and writing poetry as well as the landscape, flowers, and vegetation and many bees up close and in swirls and swarms. The tension between Plath's melancholic moods and lyrical poetry and the hopeful, careful process of beekeeping is captured beautifully here. In the endnote, Novesky provides a brief biographical sketch of Plath and explains her motivation for this story: she wanted readers (who may here be encountering Plath for the first time) to know that the poet was "so much more than her legendary death."
Reviewer: | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2025

RELATED 

LITERATURE

Delicious!
by Larios, Julie
LITERATURE

Book of Questions / Libros de las preguntas
by Neruda, Pablo
LITERATURE

Out of This World
by Walker, Sally M.
LITERATURE

Zoobilations!
by Florian, Douglas
LITERATURE

At the Pond
by Elliott, David
More

Get connected. Join our global community of more than 200,000 librarians and educators.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

We are currently offering this content for free. Sign up now to activate your personal profile, where you can save articles for future viewing.

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER?