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Old Barn Books - Bren MacDibble

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219 pages

English

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Set in a future Australia in a time when there are no bees and children are employed to scramble through the fruit trees with feather wands, like the pear farmers of Hanyuan in China do today. Peony wants to be a bee, a hand pollinator. She's light, fast, and even though she's a year too young, she's going to be the best bee the farm has ever seen...except when you're only 9, it's hard to get everyone around you to go along with your plan. A beautiful and fierce novel for middle grade readers, 'How to Bee' explores an all-too-possible dystopian social landscape with an intensely compelling and original voice.

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Children's

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Publié par	Old Barn Books
Date de parution	03 mai 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781910646632
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	49 Mo

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How Beeto BREn Macdibble

To all the kids who face hard times with courage, and stand tall for the ones they love.AN OLD BARN BOOK First published in Australia by Allen Unwin 2017 This edition published in the UK by Old Barn Books Ltd 2018 Copyright Bren MacDibble 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Old Barn Books Ltd Warren Barn West Sussex RH20 1JW Distributed in the UK by Bounce Sales Marketing Ltd Sales@bouncemarketing.co.uk ISBN 9781910646441 Cover and text design by Joanna Hunt Printed in TK First UK edition 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

peony pest Today! It’s here! Bright and real and waiting. The knowing of it bursts into my head so big and sudden, like the crack of morning sun busting through the gap at the top of the door. I fall out of my bunk and hit the packing-box floor. I scramble up, right into Gramps asleep in his chair in front of the potbelly stove.‘Cha!’ he growls.‘Sorry, Gramps,’ I say. ‘It’s bee day.’ I pull on my pest vest and try to squeeze past him, but he holds out his foot.‘First eat, then bee,’ he says, real firm. He cuts a wedge from the oatcake on top of the stove.

big and clumsy to ever be a bee. I take a bite of oatcake and crumble the rest and scatter it so I can get away without chooks on my tail.Sometimes bees get too big to be up in the branches, sometimes they fall and break their bones. This week both happened and Foreman said, ‘Tomorrow we’ll find two new bees.’ Cockies screech loud from the tree over our shack. They know it’s time to get moving. ‘I can’t,’ I say and try to squeeze past again. ‘Foreman’s waiting.’ My sister, Magnolia, sticks her fluffy head out from the top bunk. ‘Stomp yourself, Peony-pest,’ she groans.‘You won’t diz me when I’m a bee,’ I say.‘P the bee? Yeah, dying for that,’ Mags says and flops back on the bunk. But she won’t diz me when I’m a bee. Everyone likes bees. Urbs come out in buses from the city just to see bees work. The Urbs cling to the bus windows as the buses travel up and down between the rows of blossoms, and if they ever look out the back window after they pass me in my boringgreen pest vest, they’ll see me standing there with my rude finger up, telling them how I feel about them getting all the fruit we work so hard to make.I grab the oatcake from Gramps, duck around him and push through the sacking-lined door.My chooks cluck when they see me and I flick the catch on the coop door. They push out and peck at the grass. ‘I’m not doing pests today,’ I tell them. ‘You have to get your own. I’m a bee now.’ I crumble some of my oatcake, so they cluck all happy around my feet. ‘Mags is still a pest, she’ll find you something to eat.’ Mags is too

me and aj I race to the meeting point down in apples, but eleven pests are already there. I smile at my friend Applejoy and he smiles back. It’s gonna be him and me, like always.‘Peony? Are you ten yet?’ Foreman asks when he sees me. His fluffy eyebrows push down towards his nose.‘Yeah, Boz,’ I lie and look all caz.He nods, and I join the other kids waiting.Pomegranate digs me in the back with her pointy finger to tell me she knows I’m lying.‘Cha,’ I whisper.Foreman tells us what to do to try-out to be a bee. I’ve seen bees working. I know how it’s done. He hands us a leather cord, and when we all have one, Foreman says, ‘Go!’ The pests rush first to the pile of poles and then to the feather box and scuffle over the feathers. I get my pole and stand back. I don’t need those old rummaged through muck feathers. I reach into my pocket and pull out feathers from my chooks. The best bum fluff. The softest fluffiest feathers. I lash them to the end of my wand just like I seen bees do and then I run to Foreman. ‘I done, Boz,’ I say.He checks my lashing, nods and hands me a pouch of stamens. He nods towards the trees. ‘Row one.’ I’m proud like I’m gonna bust. This is how I always imagined. Me, first with the lashing. I run fast down to the apple trees. Pomegranate is right behind me. She got a nod from Foreman and she’s running to row two.I’m light. I’m quick. But Pomz can run along fence tips wide as my thumb. I seen her practising. She’s long keen on being a bee.I scramble into the branches of the first tree. Old, thick and spread wide, easy. I dip my wand into the pouch. The other end tangles in the branches. Pomz dips hers on the ground before she climbs. I’m too stupid for

‘Go, Aaj,’ I say back. I dip the wand in my pouch, with a big show in case Foreman’s watching, so he can see I did it proper, before I climb the tree. The pouch is already half empty. I don’t know if I’ll have enough to finish the whole row. I spilled some when I fell. I don’t want to tell Foreman I spilled some, so when he comes to check my skills I just smile.‘Good bee,’ he says.I’m full to busting again. I will be a bee today!not remembering that’s how bees do it. I check over my shoulder. Foreman’s busy checking lashings. Maybe he’s not seen me do it wrong.I pull the end of the wand out from the branches and start along a branch. A stick jams in my legs and I trip and fall straight out of the tree. I land on my stomach on the dirt. Pomz sniggers and scrambles up her tree. She’s stuck the end of her wand into my legs!‘Cha!’ I whisper and scramble to my feet. Foreman don’t like bees who fight. He’s ripped bee vests right off the backs of bees who fight. I climb back into my tree. Foreman’s still busy. Didn’t see me fall, but I’ve lost my lead. Pomz is already doing one side of her tree.I flick the feathers from flower to flower, every flower I can reach, and coz I’m fast and light and a good climber I can pretty much reach them all. This tree will have lots offruit soon and Foreman will remember that the first row was the one Peony done.Pomz is running up the main branches of her tree without hanging onto anything. She’s heavier than me but faster coz of her balance. She jumps down and runs to her next tree.Applejoy has his lashing nodded and he runs past to row four just as I jump from my first tree. ‘Go, P!’ he says.

the new bees Lessons start on the speakers. Urbs don’t like that we farm kids are too busy to get educated, so lessons get played over the speakers while we work.Today’s lesson’s just for us. It’s about the history of the bees. Not us. The real ones they used to have thirty years ago before the famines.I think they looked like pests. Not the kids who kill pests but the actual bugs. They flew on little wings like some pests from flower to flower to collect nectar to make something sweet like sugar to share with people. ‘Honey,’ the speaker says over and over, like honey was the whole point of bees, not this job I’m doing now. I don’t know what honey tastes like. Gramps knows. He says, ‘Sweet like honey,’ sometimes. When the real bees flew from flower to flower, they did this job. One tiny bee could do the work of twenty kid bees every day. And the speaker says there used to be millions of them.I think all the bees went away coz they looked small like pests. Before the famine, farmers didn’t have enough farm kids to catch the pests so they sprayed poison on the pests, but the poison didn’t know which was bees and which was pests.Scientists still have some of the little bees and they say one day they’ll bring them back to work on the farms.I don’t want the bees to come back. I want to be a bee. Coz Mags and me is farm kids, and we can stay in our shed with Gramps and we get food enough for all of us even though Gramps can’t work much no more, except for packing time. Everyone works like a dog at packing time. Little or old, there’s so many jobs, everyone works.Before the famine, Ma was little and lived with Gramps in the city with the Urbs. Life was bad, there was no food, and no shed to live in. When the farms came to the city and asked them if they wanted to work just for food and a place to build their shed, they came on the

buses with the other people who were tired of living in the streets, and being hungry, and being attacked while they slept.Ma works back in the city now, coz she says if we don’t make some cold hard cash we’ll be living in a shed forever. But I like our shed. I like the trees. I like our chooks. If I get chosen to be a bee today everything will be super-cherries.I jump down and run to the next tree. Pomz is just ahead of me. She looks over her shoulder and scowls a face like a dried apricot that I’m catching her.There’s five trees each in our rows, and when I get to my last tree, there’s not enough stamen powder in my pouch to cover the feathers properly. I can pretend, but it’s important to get powder on every flower, that I know for sure. If the last tree in my row has no fruit in a few weeks’ time, Foreman will be telling me all about it and asking for my bee vest back.I run two rows down where AJ’s in his fourth tree. ‘I’m out and I’ve got one more tree!’ I tell him, holding up my pouch. He holds out his and lets me dip. He’s a good friend.‘Go! Go!’ I tell him and he goes back to work.Pomz is already in her fifth tree. Foreman’s watching 10 us both. We’re the leaders. He seen me reload from AJ’s pouch. He’ll guess I spilled.I scramble into the tree and get to work, touching each of the flowers gently.I jump down just after Pomz and we race to Foreman. We arrive together coz I’m faster at running.Foreman nods and puts Pomz first in line and me behind. That don’t mean nothing, I tell myself.AJ races the girl from row three and beats her to stand in line behind me.Being first or second doesn’t mean you’re instant bee. Foreman has to like your style. You have to be gentle to the flowers and branches and not clumsy. With