Maya is born into a hive in the middle of a revolution, and on her very first flight she decides never to go back to carrying honey and making wax: she wants to see the world in bloom. Alone among the grasses, the garden and the lake, she meets a beetle who lives in a rose, a fly called Puck who is always in a hurry, and a good many creatures who would gladly eat her, and has to learn to live on her wits. What she wants most of all is to meet a human being. Waldemar Bonsels published the story in Germany in 1912; it sold in millions and was translated everywhere, long before the cartoon. Forty-eight plates of painting, from Carl Spitzweg to Wilhelm Leibl, gather the small world of the meadow and the open air that Maya crosses on her summer out.
The Adventures of Maya the Bee : A Young Bee's Summer Outside the Hive
Geschreven door Waldemar Bonsels
