Growing Up With Bees

         The book that I chose to review is called The Secret Life of Bees. It was written by Sue Monk Kidd in 2002. This book's publisher is the Penguin Group. I picked this book because it was an interesting read, and it brought up a lot of important issues. What interested me about this book was the fact that it took place in a different time and place, which is South Carolina in the 1960’s. This book is a work of fiction. The most significant theme of this book is racism. It is important because it shows what it was like to be black and live in the south back in the 60’s. Some parts of this book were not exactly pleasant to read about, so it is not for those that are light at heart. Otherwise this book has a lot of well written details that make it sound realistic. This book’s voice comes from the first person, who is a teenage girl named Lily. This probably suggests that this is a coming of age story, which it is. The main character changes a lot as the book progresses, and all of this happens during the summer break between middle school and high school. This book focuses a lot on the social interactions between Lily and the people that take her in, so there is a lot of dialogue to be found here.

         Some of what I really liked about this book was the ways that the main character's surroundings and  especially nature were described. A good example of the way that the main character describes her setting is shown in the following quote, “The inside of the honey house was one big room filled with strange honey-making machines – big tanks, gas burners, troughs, levers, white boxes, and racks piled with waxy honeycombs” (Kidd 75). This book talks a lot about bees and honey, as the title might suggest. When the story does mention beekeeping it does get technical, sort of like a science textbook can be.  I do recommend this book because overall I liked reading it. It was refreshing, interesting, and engaging. There is a movie out there that is based on this book, but to tell the truth I found the book more worthwhile because it was less condensed and more realistic.

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