Little Bee: The Buzz About the Party

Gr 1-3–Bee, a third grader who has two dads and is depicted as white, begins to worry at school when her teacher has the class compete as teams to plan a Mother’s Day party. While dealing with the class bully, Bee ­notices the meaning of “mother” as a verb while discovering the different family structures of her classmates. This is a creative and insightful story with big messages that balance teachable moments with inquisitiveness, friendship, and the universal fun of pizza parties. There is mention of surrogates and egg donors as well as families with two moms, grandparents, stepparents, and single parents. The text is printed in a larger font with generous spacing and margins for beginning chapter book readers. It has a few black-and-white illustrations by McKeown in each chapter, some full page, that will help newer readers with pacing. The realistically styled cartoons depict diverse characters with varying skin colors and types of hair.