Hmmm… A picture book where a bragging bee that always wins the weekly bee race gets dragged down a peg or two and taught humility. The artwork will never win any awards, but I guess it shows this is a personal labour of love from the creator. The text is intent on being in verse, and as such has quite a lot of rhyming, if the rhythm and meter of the poetry is not always present. It's not a horrendous fail, but I can't see it gaining much traction sales-wise, as I am sure books doing similar and better are easy to find. I don't wish it ill, but the childishness in the art really wasn't my kind of thing – two and a half stars.

Thanks to Troubadour and NetGalley for this ebook ARC in return for my honest review.

This book did not do a lot for me. Zee Zee is the fastest bee in the hive and after winning the race does a dance and gloats about it. This books tells how the Queen Bee taught humility to Zee Zee who changed after that. OK story with middling illustrations.

Zee Zee The Humble Bee is a picture book for young readers written and illustrated by Michael Obiora. Released 28th March 2025, it's 28 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats.

Accompanied by a simple story in very loosely rhyming verse, this illustrated young reader book introduces Zee Zee, an athletically gifted but arrogant young bee who -always- wins the weekly bee race. She's alienated her friends and is sad and lonely. The Queen of the hive gives her some unsolicited advice and she learns to be more humble without dimming her own talent to fit in.

It's a good message which is somewhat obscured by the art which can be charitably described as rendered in a naive style (see the cover art). The bees are anthropomorphic, with little running shoes and humanoid faces, and a crown on the queen bee. I respect the author's decision to do everything himself, but am not at all sure the story is best served by doing that, but at the end of the day, it's a fun and effective story with a good message, and will undoubtedly find a solid welcome with babies to early primary school kids.

Prose, spelling, and vernacular are UK spelling, but won't pose any problems in context for readers from the USA.

Three and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Jumping right into this review, I really want to applaud the author for creating a kids' book with a moral that you definitely don't see every day. Having the ability to be humble and teach others without being cocky is more important than most people think, and it isn't talked about as often as it should be. A lot of times people need to take a step off of their pedestal and have some empathy for others, which is the main reason why I appreciate this book so much. Additionally, this central idea was executed perfectly, and this book was written well. However, while the rhyming didn't take anything away from this book, it also didn't add anything. In other words, the author could have let that element go and the book would have still been great. Lastly, the illustrations were surprisingly good! I thought that using paper-drawn (as opposed to digital) artwork was impressive and very unique, so it altogether was beneficial for the overall book. Bravo!!

Thank you for the ARC. This was a great teaching story about not gloating and making others feel bad when they don’t win. However, the faces on the bees were quite creepy.