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Bee Season
Myla Goldberg. Knopf: 2001. ISBN: 0385498802. 288 pages.
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About the Author
A page of detailed biographical information on Bee Season, including excerpts from interviews in which Goldberg interprets her own work.
Goldberg spent a year doing hands-on research for her novel, attending the National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C., where she realized that the “super turbo-charged” atmosphere seemed like “a microcosm of the childhood experience.”
All in the Family
A synopsis of the literary traditions and genres with which Bee Season is affiliated and a brief explanation of these connections, giving your book group the opportunity to understand Goldberg’s novel in a larger literary perspective.
How would you define Bee Season? (It’s okay if you’re not sure—scholars can’t seem to make up their minds either!). Is it a coming-of-age novel, a realistic novel about family, a spiritual novel about Jewish mysticism, or an stylistically innovative parable told through different points of view?
Talk Back to the Critics
Excerpts of some major critical reviews of Bee Season from authoritative journals, newspapers, and magazines. We encourage your book group to enjoy the opportunity to argue with expert opinion.
Most critics love to talk about what they think of a book and are less inclined to talk about how a book makes them feel. Bee Season inspires them to do both, with one reviewer asking his readers to “imagine a Jewish Ordinary People and then some.”
Character Tree
A list of major characters and their dominant characteristics and values, showing characters’ relationships to each other.
You’ll read about the eccentric Naumann family and the people who surround them: grandparents, teachers, friends and rivals, spiritual leaders, and religious followers.
Streams of Themes
A breakdown of potential major discussion themes in Bee Season, including ways these themes are interconnected.
Bee Season is all about the search for happiness and fulfillment. We explore the all-too-ordinary tunnel vision that sometimes gets in the way of these characters’ extraordinary quests for personal transformation.
Doorways to Discussion
A chronologically and thematically organized list of discussion questions, which function to explore, in a logical and thoughtful manner, the questions and possibilities that Bee Season evokes.
Who knew that a novel about spelling bees could be so compelling? There’s lots to discuss in Bee Season, and here’s one example of the 42 questions featured in this section: “What does Eliza realize as she looks at the family picture in the Times-Herald the day after the spelling bee (65)?”
Taste Test
A selection of other books on subjects similar to those in Bee Season to consider for future book group meetings or for private reading.
If you like reading about the complexities of family, admire Goldberg’s use of multiple perspectives, and want to find out about the work of today’s youngest and smartest women writers, and we’ve included lots of books we think you’ll enjoy!
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