The Adventures of Maya the Bee

Rating:
Summary: A very imaginative and enriching children's book
Review: Many years ago I gave this book to my former elementary school teacher; I was happy to find out later that she read it to every generation of students until she retired.

Waldemar Bonsels masterfully crafted a book in which the insect world is a metaphore/allegory of the humans'. Its stories are about compasion, love, loss, loyalty, heroism, life and death, even ethics, and maybe provide the reader with a better understanding of the world's diversity.

Maya's story starts from the moment the little bee is born. Although she was supposed to be a working bee, she is too inquisitive to be satisfied with that, so she leaves the beehive to learn more about the world. Every creature she encounters and every experience, good or bad, seem to bring a bit of wisdom into little Maya's mind and eventually into the reader's.

This is a book that was written almost a century ago in Europe, yet it's as great a read today as it was the first day it was published. It's a book rich in many ways: the stories are fascinating, endearing, meaningful and told in a form that is intellectually evolved enough to be enjoyed by an adult, yet very accessible to a child's level of comprehension. I read this book first when I was 8 and had fun reading it again at 38.

Maya the Bee seems to be a much more popular character in Europe. I always wondered why, although published here a long time ago, this book never became popular in the States. Then again, at the time Maya was spreading her wings in Europe, Disney was begining to captivate the imagination of children on this side of the Atlantic.
Oooh, the power of marketing...