The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
320 pages
Publisher:  Viking (2002)
ISBN: 0670032379
Reading Level/Lexile:  9th grade and up/740L
Genre: Historical fiction, Abuse, Racism

Annotation/Teaser:  Lily's father is abusive and neglectful and her mother is dead. After Lily's housekeeper and surrogate mother, Rosaleen is arrested, Lily breaks her out of jail and they run away to the Boatrights, where Lily learns a lot about love and life and what really happened the day her mother died.

Plot Summary:  Lily lives with her neglectful and abusive father, T.Ray on a peach farm in South Carolina.  They have a housekeeper, Rosaleen, who acts as Lily's surrogate mother after her own mother leaves.  Rosaleen is arrested for pouring "snuff juice" on three white men.  Lily breaks her out of jail and they come up with a plan to leave town.  Lily's mother owned a picture of the Virgin Mary and on the back was written the name of a town.  This town, Tiburon, SC, may hold the secret to her mother's past.  As Lily and Rosaleen hitchhike, they find the same Black Mary on a jar of honey in a general store in Tiburon.  There they are pointed to the Boatwright residence.  August, May, and June are the names of the three Boatwright sisters who live there and make the honey.  Lily makes up a story about being an orphan and she and Rosaleen are invited to stay.
Lily meets Zach, who is August's godson and learns the work of beekeeping.  Zach and Lily quickly  become friends and vow to be together one day.  While staying with the Boatwrights, Lily learns the truth about her mother.  Lily embraces her new family and community and quickly what it is like to be loved and happy.
  
About the Author: Sue Monk Kidd  Raised in rural Georgia, the daughter of an imaginative, story-telling father, Sue Monk Kidd knew early on that she wanted to be a writer. She cites Thoureau's Walden and Kate Chopin's The Awakening as early influences that would eventually lead to a writing career rooted in spirituality.
Kidd majored in nursing at Texas Christian University and graduated in 1970 with a B.S. degree. During her twenties she worked as a registered nurse and as a nursing instructor. She married her husband, Sandy Kidd, whith whom she had two children.

Kidd and her family were living in South Carolina where her husband taught at a small liberal arts college when she decided to enroll in writing classes. Her goal was to write fiction, but she began her career writing nonfiction inspirational pieces, many of which she published in Guideposts Magazine. A spiritual searching ensued, which Kidd chronicled in her first book, God's Joyful Surprise (1988), which she followed quickly with a second spiritual memoir, When the Heart Waits (1990).

 While in her forties, Kidd turned her attention to a study of feminist spirituality, from which resulted The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (1996), recounting her spiritual journey from a Baptist upbringing to nontraditional feminist spiritual experiences. Sue Monk Kidd is best known for her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees (2002), in which she tells the coming-of-age story set in 1964 of a fourteen year old girl and her black housekeeper, a modern classic that spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list, has been published in 35 countries, and is now taught in college and high school classrooms.

In 2005, Kidd followed with The Mermaid Chair, the story of a middle-aged married woman who falls in love with a Benedictine monk. Like The Secret Life of Bees, The Mermaid Chair uses its female protagonist to explore spiritual themes. The Mermaid Chair was also a long-time bestseller and award winner.

Sue Monk Kidd (n.d.) Retrieved from www.contemporarylit.about.com

Critical Evaluation: The Secret Life of Bees is a powerful story of a girl who is struggling to find answers about her mother.  The major theme in this novel is in the name of the novel.  It is secrets.  One statement made by August in the book sums this up.  "Most people don’t have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive.  Bees have a secret life we don’t know anything about”  This is a metaphor about how people are not always what they seem.  Most people have more complicated lives than what appears on the surface.  The bees and the hive are a major metaphor in this book.  Kidd builds on this metaphor throughout the story.  By the end of the story, we see that every character has a reason for their actions that cannot be seen at first.  For example, Lily lies to about who she is so that she can stay at the Boatwright residence in order to find out more about her mother.  Lily also finds out the her image of her mother is not what she really was.  Her mother was not the perfect mother that Lily thought she was.  We also find out that May is so emotional because of her twin sister's death.  Lily and the reader learn that, like the bees that the Boatwright's have, people are often motivated by things that cannot be seen.  I think this is dynamic story of love and what motivates people to do the things they do.  

Curriculum Ties:  Reading, Language Arts,

Book Talk Ideas:  How does Lily find peace, happiness, and love while learning the art of beekeeping? 

Controversial Issues:  Racism, Death, Violence

Defense:

*I will keep the library's selection policy on hand and memorized with a good understanding  of the standards and policies to show that the selection meets the standards. 

*I will keep good and bad reviews (both electronic and print) and make sure they are from reliable and respected sources such as School of Library Journal, Booklist, and YALSA. I will have copies of these reviews to give away. 

*I will confirm the library's position to provide intellectual freedom as stated in the Library Bill of Rights and keep a copy of this.

*I will keep a written rationale to justify the reasons this material is included in the collection, such as educational significance and curriculum ties.

*I will be respectful and calm and practice "active listening".

*I will make sure I read the material and are very familiar with it.

* I will keep a reconsideration form on file in the event that my other strategies don't work. 

Why I Chose This Book?   I chose this book because it deals with racism and the reality that was the 1960's.  This is a great book to teach students what life was like as an African American in America at that time.