Award-winning author Pablo Cartaya’s latest middle grade follows twelve-year-old Yolanda Cicerón as she fights to the save the last known beehive in the world from extinction against nearly insurmountable obstacles—an environment completely changed by climate change and the greedy humans who will profit from the bees.
THE LAST BEEKEEPER
by Pablo Cartaya
HarperCollins Children’s Books, May 2022
Yolanda Cicerón has big dreams. One day she’s going to become the scientist who gives Silo – the most connected and advanced town in the Valley – the technology the world lost. But as she and her older sister Cami struggle to maintain their family farm that dream floats farther away. With relentless storms across the country, hurricanes on the coast, freezes bearing down from the north, depending on fickle nature for a good harvest is getting Yoly nowhere fast. And when she discovers that they can no longer afford her ticket out of farm life, she decides to take matters into her own hands.
What Yoly doesn’t realize is that in trying to secure her future, she’s actually bargained it away. Silo and its mayor are hiding secrets, and the more Yoly uncovers, the more she realizes they aren’t interested in her bright young mind but in how she might lead them to the secret her family has guarded for decades.
Deep within the woods lies the last remnant of a long extinct species and in its honeycombs is liquid gold –the rarest commodity in the world. When the bees can be Yoly’s one chance to save herself from a horrible future or the key to pulling the Valley out from under Silo’s thumb, will she be able to risk the queen for the colony?
THE LAST BEEKEEPER is a stirring adventure story about fighting to right the wrongs of past generations while finding hope in our present by award-winning author Pablo Cartaya.
Pablo Cartaya is an award-winning author, screenwriter, speaker, and occasional actor. He is the Pura Belpré Honor Book Award winner for The Epic Fail OF Arturo Zamora; an Audie Finalist for Audiobook of the Year in the Middle Grade Category (for which he narrated); an ALSC notable book of the year for Marcus Vega Doesn’t Speak Spanish; and the 2020 Schneider Family Book Award Honor winner for his middle grade novel, Each Tiny Spark. His newest title, The Last Beekeeper, contemplates a future where bees are central to a re-building world. His novels focus on the themes of family, community, culture, and the environment. He lives in the hyphens between his Cuban and American identities and with his familiain Miami.
Sixteen-year-old Arden Grey is struggling. Her mother has left their family, her father and her younger brother won’t talk about it, and a classmate, Tanner, keeps harassing her about her sexuality—which isn’t even public. (She knows she likes girls romantically, but she thinks she might be asexual.) At least she’s got her love of film photography and her best and only friend, Jamie, to help her cope. Then Jamie, who is trans, starts dating Caroline, and suddenly he isn’t so reliable. Arden’s insecurity about their friendship grows. She starts to wonder if she’s jealous or if Jamie’s relationship with Caroline is somehow unhealthy—and it makes her reconsider how much of her relationship with her absent mom wasn’t okay, too. Filled with big emotions, first loves, and characters navigating toxic relationships, Ray Stoeve’s honest and nuanced novel is about finding your place in the world and seeking out the love and community that you deserve.
Just days before spring break, Neil Kearney is set to fly across the country with his childhood friend (and current friend-with-benefits) Josh, to attend his brother’s wedding―until Josh tells Neil that he’s in love with him and Neil doesn’t return the sentiment.
Human rights organisations and governments speak of a crime against humanity, a « cultural genocide ». Mihrigul Tursun has repeatedly been a victim of Chinese efforts to totally assimilate the Uyghur minority. She experienced the so-called « re-education camps » in their indescribable cruelty, the physical and psychological violence, first hand. In a way that remains unexplained to this day, her young son died while she was imprisoned. Today, despite the threat that has not disappeared even in exile, she has the courage to speak openly about what she experienced and to describe from her own experience what the Uyghur minority in China has to endure. A significant eyewitness account that brings the reader closer to the people behind the news from China.
No one is as at home among wild woodland animals as Wolfgang Schreil: he gets up close and personal with red deer and lynxes, photographs a hunting stoat at ten paces, gets within touching distance of poisonous snakes, and stands among roe deer grazing peacefully by his side. How does he manage to get so unbelievably close to them, to share moments of connectedness that count among the happiest times of his life? For Wolfgang ‘Woid Woife’ Schreil, the woods represent a safe haven and place where we can be truly free. His gripping stories, his priceless knowledge of the animal world and his close-up animal photographs have made him a very special woodland ambassador. His immense passion for life and animals, his faith in the power of love, and his belief that nature’s greatest gifts are revealed to us if we are only patient, are an inspiration for each and every one of us who yearn to be mindful of what really matters.