When the sunshine pours like warm honey from the sky, it’s time to tend Grandpa’s bees. This day his granddaughter lends a hand, and she is treated to a spectacular show. The swarming bees whirl and twirl like a big buzzing cloud until they finally cluster on the limb of a tree. Then it’s up to granddaughter to bring the bees down and move them into their new hive, which she does with great care. Grandpa is proud. His granddaughter proves to be “a fine keeper of bees.”

Out of more than 500 bee species in Oregon, this poster selects 18 bees including specie names and a detailed picture. Students will be shocked when they see what these many bee species look like and how they differ. This poster does not need to be returned.

Will Allen is no ordinary farmer. A former basketball star, he’s as tall as his truck, and he can hold a cabbage–or a basketball–in one hand. But what is most special about Farmer Will is that he can see what others can’t see. When he looked at an abandoned city lot in Milwaukee he saw a huge table, big enough to feed the whole world.

No space, no problem. Poor soil, there’s a solution. Need help, found it. Farmer Will is a genius in solving problems. In 2008, the MacArthur Foundation named him one for his innovative urban farming methods, including aquaponics and hydroponics.

In “Honey Bees: Letters From the Hive,” bee expert Stephen Buchmann takes readers on an incredible tour. Enter a beehive–one part nursery, one part honey factory, one part queen bee sanctum–then fly through backyard gardens, open fields, and deserts where wildflowers bloom.

This student magazine teaches about a real-world issue facing our Nation’s forests and trees. The accompanying teaching guide contains two hands-on lessons and skill-building worksheets to build upon science concepts in the magazine. This resource does not need to be returned.

This very fun and wonderfully illustrated book will help students discover how plants work. From germination all the way to photosynthesis with the help of amazing illustrations, cutaway views, magnified insets and detailed photographs. This book will need to be returned.

Below your feet, Mighty Mole is on the move. Like a swimmer in dirt, she strokes through the soil. Her tunnels are everywhere! She finds food, eludes a predator, has a family, and helps to make Super Soil. Moles live almost everywhere yet are rarely seen. Similarly, soil is a largely invisible ecosystem and yet is vital to the health of the world. Following the story, two Explore More for Kids pages offer a matching challenge and a review of some of the remarkable traits that make moles “mighty.” Two additional pages of Explore More for Teachers and Parents offers activities in visual and language arts, science, technology, and math.

Put an ear to the ground for the clicking, popping, snapping music of this garden grown wild. In verse as witty as it is buggy, Kurt Cyrus conducts a chirruping chorus of voices great and small. From a stinkbug trying (and failing) to hide itself, to a cicada’s struggle to escape its own skin, to an ant’s marathon dinner march, and a frog’s identity crisis, here is a garden teeming with down-to-earth fun for readers of every species–no matter how many legs they have!

Oregon author and illustrator Kurt Cyrus signed copies!

“Sometimes bees can be a bit rude.
They fly in your face and prance on your food.”

And yet… without bees, we might not have strawberries for shortcakes or avocados for tacos!

Shabazz Larkin’s The Thing About Bees is a Norman Rockwell-inspired Sunday in the park, a love poem from a father to his two sons, and a tribute to the bees that pollinate the foods we love to eat.

Children are introduced to different kinds of bees, “how not to get stung,” and how the things we fear are often things we don’t fully understand.