The Beekeeper's Picnic

Today, I am off to L.A., but not before I tell you about the beekeeper's picnic, which is today's Thursday News of the Absurd Will Someone Please Write This Book Inspirational Moment.

You may remember Tinkerbell's good friend Belinda, of "wake me up before you go to fairyland" fame.* Her family keeps bees and this story comes from them.**

Last week, Belinda's dad decided to collect the honey from their hives, so he moved the hives into their garage, hoping to separate the hives from the bees who can be, of course, protective of such things. But he forgot to shut the garage door. So when Belinda's family came back, the bees had all moved into the garage, swarming and buzzing and generally having a great time in a nice, enclosed, shady place. Belinda's dad tried several ideas, but couldn't separate the bees from their hives. Eventually, he had to move the hives back outside, wait for the bees to follow, and then grab each hive, sneak around to the back of the house, enter through the back door, and drag the (hopefully bee-free) hive through the house back to the garage. There was some marital disagreement about whether such activities left a sticky trail of honey on the floor. But the part I really like is that the bees were apparently baffled. Where did the hives go? As Belinda's dad put it, they were all asking the leaders, "Dude, you were doing the 'come here' dance. Where's the hive?"

I want a picture book from the bees' perspective. I want the bees just trying to have a nice picnic and an increasingly overwhelmed beekeeper trying to outwit them. I want a NYC bee shouting, "Leonard! What's your problem? You did the dance. I came. Where's the goods?" I want David Small to illustrate in pen and watercolor with the kind of awesome details he's so good at. I want the race through the house to include every room, with bees primping and powder-puffing in the bathroom and face-to-face staring at the fish in the aquarium. And I want the book to end with Belinda's baffled mom coming home and finding everyone -- kids, dad, bees, dog, whoever -- asleep, jars of honey everywhere, and a trail of honey from the back door, through the whole house, ending in the garage.

Who will write me this book???

* Not her real name.
** But the book I want would greatly exaggerate the story, of course.