Omar, The Bees And Me

Omar the bees and me is such a sweet story about two friends, who come together as both their grandparents keep bees, though they live in different parts of the world.

The book contains lots of valuable information about bees, how important they are, what they need to thrive and how bees are kept in every country worldwide. My 7 and 4 year old both learnt a lot whilst enjoying the kind heartwarming story. My 10 month olds favourite page is one of the info pages at the start, which is illustrated so beautifully. The whole book contains stunning illustrations.

I love how immigration, race and religious differences are represented in this story. It's also great if you need to discuss fears of starting a new school and making new friends. I moved school a lot as a child and I think this book would have helped me, even though the new school new country thing isn't the main storyline. Its such a warm lovely story though, and even better the last page has a recipe for cake! What's better than cake?!

We love this book! It had everything you would want; a beautiful compelling story, inclusive characters, some learning gems scattered throughout and beautiful illustrations, plus it's helped my nearly 4 year old come up with a project for us to plant wild flower seeds for the bees This is the sort of book which needs to be in everyone's library, and in schools. It had so many opportunities for story kicked play too. Heartwarming

This is one of the nicest new books that I’ve read in a long time. It’s such a lovely story about friendship and community, and shows what a community can achieve when they work together.

The children at Nursery could really relate to this book. We planted bulbs last Autumn and the last couple of weeks they have finally bloomed. The bees have been visiting frequently, and the story really helped the children to understand why our flowers are important for bees.

We are really looking forward to trying out the honey cake recipe too. It looks delicious!

Highly recommended for 3-4 year olds. We love it!

What a wonderful book to highlight how we can help our local bees! We all enjoyed reading this book and my 4yo loved the idea of planting seeds for flowers to grow for the bees - we actually have a bee hotel in our garden and he thought it would be great for them to have flowers right outside.

We actually have seeds left over to plant so this has incentivised me to get them planted with him!

We were also particularly drawn to the children’s drawings and handwritten notes at the start and finish - these really drew him into the book and inspired him to draw some bees!!

Overall it’s a lovely story about forming a friendship over a common interest ans bringing the whole community together. It was really heartwarming.

We’ll definitely be trying out the honey cake recipe too!

We were kindly gifted this book this week for the babipur book club! From the moment it arrived it has been read so many times! Perfect for this time of year! Straight away… did you know there were so many different types of bees? Matthew didn’t and was blown away, it was a great conversation piece at the family gathering and we had the other day. He then went on the research different bees and spent ages learning about them. We love story’s that trigger that sort of interest and you can learn from them.
The story is about two friends and how they both love bees. It also shows how a community can come together planting wild flowers to attract more bees to the town than they have every seen before.
The illustrations are beautiful and the story is a lovely read for Matthew who is 7 and is quite good at reading. It was also lovely to engage with our daughter who is two and she could come over and make buzzing noises and looked at all the colourful images on the pages.
We also love the cake recipe at the end and are going to try and make a GF/DF one for us as our daughter has allergy’s. We have never had honey cake before so are excited to try it!
This book is also great for enabling bookish play! The plan toy bees or lank jade pair up lovely and grapat to make lovely flowers. Could also inspire some lovely arts and crafts sessions too!
Overall a truly lovely read and thank you again babipur for sending it to us