Invasion of the Beekeepers

"Summer is here now and it's the best thing ever. I mean, the monsters will come around like they always do, and the aliens will make me work in the garden, but so what, I know how to beat them.It's summer, and I know everything."

So begins Becky Muddler's summer of 1980.

It should be a summer like any other for the imaginative ten-year-old, filled with freedom and adventure, but Becky slowly comes to notice that things have changed. Her older sister, once her partner-in-crime and play, has begun to turn her attention to other interests, while her friend Krissy, the quiet younger girl next door, is acting even more withdrawn than normal. Trying to make sense of the changes, Becky will learn that not everything is as it seems, and that the world around her might be more treacherous than the stories she invents. Invasion of the Beekeepers is filled with the imagery of a young girl's intense imagination, one alive with aliens and monsters and ghosts, as she explores the mysteries of her small-town... from the puzzling changes in her friends and family, to her father's sudden interest in the keeping of bees, to the hunt for the illusive and monstrous Goat Man, who may or may not live in an abandoned house at the end of a lonely old road. Along the way she will learn about the nature of secrets and myths, and confront, for the first time, the reality of growing up.

Todd Michael Cox (Beast, Of Reptiles and Amphibians, Lost Creek Falls) allows his young narrator's unique voice, at times both questioning and confident, graceful and awkward, to leads us into those moments when innocence and experience meet at the brink of a childhood's end.