Let me start by saying that yes, I have been stung by honeybees and by wasps. When I get stung, I require a week's worth of steroids to flush the poison out of my body. I was stung by honeybees when I was 12 and walking my beagle--she could smell the honey and decide to dig up the hive to get to it.  If she hadn't decided to invade the hive I would never have been stung. From that point on, I was terrified of bees. Then many years later, I went to visit my best friend who kept honeybees and she insisted that I get over my fear. She kitted up herself and my son (who was 4 at the time), told me to get my camera and come take photos.  I took some amazing pictures and stuck my finger into freshly-capped honeycomb on a frame that was crawling with bees. And they were beautiful and industrious and kind of amazing. I thought to myself, one day I will have bees.

But I don't have the proper yard (too shady) or the right kind of neighbors (the ones I have are both elderly and allergic). Then I discovered that there are many different kinds of bees. I don't even remember how I learned about indigenous bees, but once I knew that I could have tiny pollinators of my own I was thrilled. Honeybees are not native to the United States. They were brought over by the first colonists in Jamestown, and some argue that without honeybees the colonists wouldn't have been successful farmers. 
The US has it's own bees--over 4,000 different types--that have different preferred foodstuffs and different times of activity. Most of these bees are solitary bees--they don't live in hives. Some live in rotted out trees, some live underground, some prefer hollow reeds. Not living in hives eliminates the need to protect a queen--each female is her own queen. They devote their time to laying eggs, collecting pollen to feed the larvae, and creating protective cases for their eggs. Many people refer to these bees as "gentle bees" due to their reluctance to sting. A few years back, I ordered a bee house, some cardboard tubes, and some Mason Bees. It was great fun to watch them shake their fuzzy bodies inside flowers and zip back and forth to the bee house. But two years ago, we had a big die-off. I'm not sure if someone was spraying their yard or garden with pesticide (DON'T DO THAT!), or if it was the late spring cold snap, but the girls all died without laying eggs. 
This spring we ordered Horn-faced Mason Bees (twice the fuzzy!) and installed them into the garden in mid-April. I was worried because it has been unseasonably cold, but the girls have been going strong.

You can see the hollow tubes that the girls are in, and the capped tubes that are full of eggs. I've named the girls Eleanor, Rosalynn, and Geraldine (after First Ladies). I've held them in my hand and I have kept a close watch on their progress. This afternoon, I'm going to be sneaking out the full tubes and replacing them with empty ones. They aren't spending a lot of time in my yard, so I don't know who's flowers they are visiting--I just hope that person knows better than to squish my girls. 
Even if you are allergic to bees and wasps, you can have happy buzzy pollinators in your yard! I order my guys from Crown Bees--they have everything you need to get started and are super helpful if you have questions. (This is not a sponsored post!) 

Let's talk a little bit more about honeybees. 
They are super important to most of the food that we eat. If you have been paying attention at all in the last few years, you know that a lot of honeybees are dying off--this presents a problem for all of us who eat food. It's partly pest infestation, partly pesticide exposure, partly they are running out of things to eat (monoculture is bad for bees!). It's gotten to the point where trucking hives from orchard to orchard is standard business. And while I love honey (so yum! so magical!) honeybees are not the most efficient pollinators--due to the fact that they carry pollen around in those little pollen sacs.

Mason bees are super sloppy about pollen. They are covered in pollen and move from flower-to-flower, dropping little pollen granules everywhere they go. This makes them more efficient in pollen distribution. It also makes them look ridiculous.

Because they are so sloppy, one mason bee can do the pollination work of 100 honeybees. And unlike honeybees, they don't need you to check the hive and maintain the comb. They are low-maintenance, high-yield additions to your yard. 
For further information about mason bees, check out Crown Bees. 
For information about our honeybee problem, check out this Youtube video.

And remember--if you don't want to raise bees, you can help by growing a variety of flowers and stop spraying your garden with pesticides! 

Now that Mother's Day has come and gone, I'm working on a collection of bicycle stories to share. I started the Pinterest board this morning--it's a work in progress to be sure. Most of the titles are for children in elementary school (grades K-5). If you enjoy a good picture book for the work of art that it is, check out Along a Long Road by Frank Viva. The illustrations and overall design of that book are really quite brilliant. 

The most interesting thing about bicycles (to me, anyway) is that they appear on nearly every continent. Are there bicycles on Antarctica? Maybe a pedal-happy scientist has brought one to the research station. 
Two minutes of research has turned up the interesting fact that YES there are (or at one time there were) bicycles on Antarctica. 

In my selection of books for this month's story collection, I tried to provide a list of books that cover a variety of viewpoints and experiences. If you have a moment, read the White Paper from the ALSC (Association for Library Service to Children) which covers the importance of books that portray the diversity and variety of the world in which we live. To sum up: this world is full of amazing and wonderful cultures and everyone should be able to see that in the books we publish and share with one another. 

Below are a list of titles about bicycles that you can check out at your library. 

Ander. Me and My Bike. Heryin Books. 2008.

Brown, Marc. D.W. Rides Again! Little, Brown. 1993.

Donahue, Jill L. Ride Right: Bicycle Safety. Picture Window Books, 2009.

Dudley, David L. The Bicycle Man. Clarion Books. 2005.

Ernst, Lisa Campbell. Little Red Riding Hood: A Newfangled Prairie Tale. Simon & Schuster Books. 1995.

Goodstein, Madeine. Wheels!:Science Projects with Bicycles, Skateboards, and Skates. Enslow Publishers. 2009.

Hillenbrand, Will. Off We Go! A Bear and Mole Story. Holiday House. 2013.

Lewis, E.B. My Rows and Piles of Coins. Clarion Books. 1999.

Mulder, Michelle. Pedal It: How Bicycles are Changing the World. Orca Book Publishers. 2013.

Parish, Herman. Amelia Bedelia Means Business. Greenwillow Books. 2013.

Proimos, James. The Best Bike Ride Ever. Dial Books for Young Readers. 2012.

Raschka, Chris. Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle. Schwartz & Wade. 2013.

Robinson, Laura. Cyclist Bikelist: a Book for Every Rider. Tundra Books. 2010.

Schwartz, David. Supergrandpa. Tortuga Press. 2005.

Shannon, David. Duck on a Bike. Blue Sky Press. 2002.

Stauffacher, Sue. Tille the Terrible Swede: How One Woman, a Sewing Needle, and a Bicycle Changed History. Alfred A. Knopf. 2011.

Tsubakiyama, Margaret. Mei-Mei Loves the Morning. Whitman, A. 1999.

Viva, Frank. Along a Long Road. Little, Brown. 2011.

Greetings! 

I'd like to take a brief moment to talk about this bibliography I have compiled, who it is for and why we (as Americans) need it. My final project for Library Materials for Children centers around literature that explores the immigrant experience in North America. The materials collected are for children in grades 3-5, and cover a range of materials from picture books to novels as well as a wide variety of experiences. These books can be used in a classroom setting as part of the social studies curriculum or in the home as jumping off points for conversations about cultural heritage and family traditions. 

As America is made of a patchwork of cultural histories and traditions all swirled together, it is important for children to learn about the many peoples who have become a part of the America we live in today. At some point in their lives, all children will meet someone who is “not from here”—whether that means another town, another state or another nation--and it is in everyone's best interest for our children to be able to empathize with that person. Today, one in every eight residents in the United States is foreign-born, and in more than 2/3 of the country foreign-born residents make up more than 5% of the population. As cross-border travel becomes easier and global communication becomes more frequent with the rise of the digital age, it is imperative that children understand that we are all human even though we may have different cultural traditions. 

We have all experienced the magic of a book: to transport us into someone else's life, to show us the world as we haven't seen it before.  I hope you will consider sharing some of these books with the kids in your life. 

Here is a list of the titles I have compiled. To read brief summaries, please go to my Pinterest board.

Alvarez, Julia. "Return to Sender" (2010).
Cheng, Andrea. "Honeysuckle House" (2004).
Fleischman, Paul. "The Matchbox Diary" (2013).
Himelblau, Linda. "The Trouble Begins" (2005).
House, Silas and Vaswani, Neela. "Same Sun Here" (2013).
Khan, Rukhsana. "Big Red Lollipop" (2010).
Lai, Thanhha. "Inside Out and Back Again" (2013).
Lombardo, Jenny. "Drita, My Homegirl" (2006).
Moore, Julianne. "My Mom Is a Foreigner, But Not to Me" (2013). 
Smith, David J. "If America Were a Village: A Book about the People of the United " (2009).
Tan, Shaun. "The Arrival" (2007). 
Trottier, Maxine. "Migrant" (2011).
Walker, Paul Robert. "All About America: A Nation of Immigrants" (2012)
Williams, Karen Lynn. "My Name Is Sangoel" (2009).

Hello all! 
To those of you who have joined me from the blogspot host, I say "nice to see you again!" 
To those of you who are here for the very first time; I say "welcome!" 

I have been having problems with my blogspot site for a while now, and it became overwhelming to change my password every day to keep the site hackers out. While I am sad to be leaving a domain that hosted Kara Paints for ten years, I am happy to be up and running on a new platform and OWNING the KaraPaints.com name. 

What to expect from me here: more art, more frequent postings, and some new stuff as I learn about librarianship while I get my Masters in Library and Information Science. Art feeds the soul, books feed the mind, and I am smooshing them together.