Akeem Keeps Bees: A CLOSE-UP LOOK at the Honey Makers and Pollinators of Sankofa Farms is one of the newest picture books from Storey. Learn about beekeeping as you follow Akeem and his dad around the farm, completing their beekeeping tasks from the establishment of a new colony to the harvesting of the honey.
Akeem Keeps Bees
This brightly-colored picture book has a unique design style, with comic book-style frames interspersed with more traditional illustrations. This enables the text to follow the story of Akeem and his father, while also providing important information about bees and beekeeping, without it getting boring.
There is a lot of information packed into this small book. Of course, being a picture book, the target audience is younger kids, but my 7-year-old, 11-year-old, and 13-year-olds and I all read it and enjoyed it. It’s a helpful introduction to beekeeping for newbies of any age.
Akeem Keeps Bees contains both a glossary and an index.
The Real Akeem Bell
The best part? Akeem Bell is a real person! Sankofa Farms is a real place, where Akeem and his father, Kamal, keep real bees. You can read about the real-life farm in a small addendum where there are photos of the real-life farmers and beekeepers. Sankofa Farms aims to “create a sustainable food source for people in both rural and urban areas of Durham and Orange County, North Carolina.” They also train young men in farm skills and donate food that they raise through cooperation with other community organizations.
Diversity
I always appreciate the opportunity to expand the diversity of our library in ways that don’t make an issue of that. (I feel a little awkward even writing this, since that is, in a way, “making an issue of it.”) What I mean is, I appreciate when the people in all of the books in our library don’t just look alike — but it’s sometimes difficult to find good books that introduce diversity without making diversity the center of the story. This is just simply a book about beekeeping, where Kamal and Akeem happen to be black farmers. I may know that’s statistically uncommon, but my kids don’t have to. They can just know that they read about a lot of different people in a lot of different situations, and some of them look like them and some of them don’t.
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