Local academics create children’s book.
Before Felicity Muth started her career as an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Austin, she found herself with some downtime and wanted to fill it with an activity that felt purposeful. She had worked with bumblebees and other species while earning her doctorate degree at the University of Nevada, Reno.
“During that time, I was taking a step back thinking about my research, and I came to the conclusion that a lot of us scientists spend our whole lives working on one thing that becomes a line in a textbook, if we’re lucky,” she says. “I thought to myself that kids should know there’s more than one kind of bee out there. I basically sat down and wrote the book based on that idea.”
The book she created was Am I Even a Bee? Having accomplished one of the monumental tasks of writing meaningful content for a children’s book, Muth contacted the owners of Sundance Books and Music in Reno to see if they’d be interested in publishing it. They were all in.
Next, she needed to find someone who could make her story come to life visually.
“I’d heard through the grapevine about this amazing illustrator, and we soon had a meeting with the owner of Sundance … and that’s how it started,” Muth says.
Enter Alexa Lindauer, illustrator of Am I Even a Bee? and project lab manager at the University of California, Santa Barbara whose work has included the study of diseases in frogs in the Sierra.
“I’d never illustrated a children’s book,” Lindauer explains. “I have a background in biology and visual arts from college and tried to maintain a balance between science and art in my life. Science is the profession; art is a passion. Through this book, I partnered with Felicity, who had this great idea, and my hope was to maintain the scientific integrity of bees while making bees appealing to children.”
A Bee Named Osmia
The lead character in Am I Even a Bee? is Osmia, which is also the name of the genus of the mason bee. In the book, Osmia, a green bee, continues to spot bees that don’t look the way she looks. She experiences a sort of existential crisis, wondering whether she’s even a bee at all, until a helpful carpenter bee introduces her to the many different types of bees in the world. Through the pages, she learns about diversity and discovers there’s no one way to be a bee.
“The way you captivate kids is through storytelling,” Muth says. “There’s a story here of acceptance and embracing diversity. My primary goal was to teach kids about the different types of bees. One of my good friends whose son is now 6 (but was 4 when he read the first copy of the book) will be out on the play yard and catch a little green and blue bee and tell his friends he just caught an Osmia. That’s what this is all about.”
Am I Even a Bee? retails for $17.95. To purchase, visit Sundance Books and Music in Reno or Spellbinder Books in Bishop and Mammoth, or find it online at Amievenabee.com.
