Betsy & Bon

Written and illustrated by Simon Howe

UQP 2026

Teacher’s Notes

Reviewed by Mia Macrossan

Simon is a writer and illustrator who says he makes books about childhood, family, hope and home. He has also illustrated many books in collaboration with others including Boss of Your Own Mind, Alfie the Kind, and Family and All That You Dream it to Be. Recently he has started writing and illustrating his own work beginning with Shoosh. Now in Betsy & Bon he has branched out into junior reader territory, creating a charming pair of bees as the central characters in three stories in one hardback volume, aptly described as ‘sweet’ on the cover.

In the first story The Hive Bestsy and Bon have made the ‘most wonderful hive in the garden’ and they go looking for some friendly bees to live there with them. Along the way they meet many friends. All would happily live in the hive but  Betsy and Bon say ‘a beehive is for bees, not ladybugs, or butterflies or snails or frogs or mice’. This potentially uncomfortable situation is resolved when Betsy and Bon come up with a different rule.

In The Good Idea Betsy and Bon try to play a variety of games, such as hide and seek, blindfold tiggy and looking through binoculars,  but none work out very well, so they decide they would ‘rather do nothing together than something apart’.

In The Sunny Spot  Betsy and Bon look for the perfect place to have their afternoon tea with their friends.  In order to get there they have to build a bridge of sticks, leaves and whatever they can find, over a stream. Unfortunately, the bridge floats away when everyone is on it but the enterprising bees come up with solution.

These stories are about friendship, working together, co-operating, having fun with imaginative play while taking care of each other. Each story is set in the garden and starts with the same phrase ‘ Down at the bottom of the garden where …followed by a different descriptive phrase for each story, thus gradually building up a picture of what the garden contains. Betsy and Bon are definitely girls dressed as bees and the other ‘animals’ are also children dressed up in various guises but they are all small enough to sit in flowers and live in hives.

The illustrations, in a muted soft colour palette, are lively and expressive throughout. Each scene vividly captures every emotion experienced by the children. And the book is very generously illustrated with full colour work on every page, complementing and extending the text, making it suitable for those readers transitioning from picture books to chapter books, but also a charming read to share at bedtiime.

These gentle stories present an attractive and safe world for children to enjoy and explore. An ideal gift for newly independent readers and a welcome addition to school and home libraries.