"One day when we were in the garden, choosing flowers for the table, my Uncle Emily gave me a dead bee and a poem for my teacher."

I was reminded of this incident with the dead bee, as reimagined by Jane Yolen in My Uncle Emily (Philomel, 2009), while writing yesterday's post about The Humblebee Hunter.  The poem in question is Emily Dickinson's "The Bumblebee's Religion--".

There are a lot of bees in Dickinson, actually; but the poem that is important to this book is Yolen's favorite, and maybe yours: "Tell all the Truth."  The book itself is beautifully written in something like free verse, and illustrated with period-appropriate style in pen-and-ink and digital media by Nancy Carpenter.  And it pairs perfectly with The Humblebee Hunter, now that I think of it.  Even the covers match!