Bee & Flea and the Puddle Problem

by Anna Humphrey, Mike Deas (Illustrator)

Overview

Insect investigators Bee and Flea are back for another sleuthing STEM adventure!

After a busy week of crime-fighting, F.L.E.A. (Fenced-in Area Law Enforcement Agency) investigators Bee and Flea are invited to an exciting event: an after-the-rain party, hosted in a puddle. Bee feels reluctant to go—she should be working on earning her official F.L.E.A. badge, and she doesn’t even know how to swim!—but enthusiastic Flea drags her along.

The pair peruse the puddle party, until Bee spots a lost baby water bear huddled beneath a leaf. Returning the creature to its mother would definitely help her earn that badge! But on the way, she discovers a bigger problem. The puddle is getting smaller, and her friends’ home is at risk of disappearing!

The second book in this engaging and funny chapter book series sees rookie agent Bee overcome challenges and crack her first case. Dynamic black-and-white illustrations bring the cast of underwater partygoers to life, while sneaky STEM content introduces readers to the water cycle and other environmental concepts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771474436
Publisher:	Owlkids Books
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Series:	Bee and Flea , #2
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)
Lexile:	580L (what's this?)
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

ANNA HUMPHREY is the author of the Bee & Flea series, the Clara Humble series, the Megabat series and other novels for middle-grade and young adult readers. Anna lives with her family, their cats, and billions upon billions of backyard critters in Kitchener, Ontario.

MIKE DEAS is an author and illustrator of many picture books and graphic novels. From his studio, Mike feels fortunate to hear the frequent humming of busy bees. He lives with his family on sunny Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.

Editorial Reviews

2023-02-08
An officious trainee policebee learns to kick back when her “flea-kini”–clad partner drags her to a pool party.

“Oh, quit being such a buzzy-body!” gripes Bee’s extroverted companion, Flea, as an invitation arrives in the splashy wake of a rainstorm. Indeed, once Bee gets over her terror of the water and dives into the puddle to find herself getting a pond-scum pie in the face from Copepod the Clown, being whirled off for a round of “pin the tail on the protist,” rescuing a baby water bear, and encountering a host of fellow partiers from heliozoans to daphnia, she considers the whole experience the bee’s knees. She even gets a commendation from her partner (“you figured out the water cycle all on your own”) after solving the mystery of what is causing the puddle to shrink. Despite expressive faces (and in the case of the cute baby tardigrade, huge googly eyes), the fauna in Deas’ frequent illustrations are drawn with enough naturalistic detail to be recognizable, and Humphrey tacks on a set of multiple-choice questions at the end to reinforce the STEM-centric elements she incorporates into much of this chapter book’s microscopic mischief. As in Bee and Flea’s initial meetup in Bee & Flea and the Compost Caper (2022), there’s plenty of entertaining back and forth in the friendship between the two main characters, too.

Delivers on the protagonist’s promise of “exciting, educational, and occasionally gross” experiences. (Informational fiction. 7-10)

Kirkus Reviews