If a Bumblebee Lands on Your Toe – Perfect Picture Book Friday

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I’m thrilled when I’m surprised by the juxtaposition of illustration and text in picture books. In IF A BUMBLEBEE LANDS ON YOUR TOE, what could have been a more literal and expected interpretation of a poem about a child’s experience, becomes an extraordinary, fantastical journey inside a fleeting moment. But that journey is rooted in real childhood experiences.

Text ©Cynthia Mackey Illustration ©Vikki Zhang

If a bumblebee lands on your toe...
Pretend you are freeze dancing
and the music stopped.

If you move, you lose the game.

Every child knows this game. And during a read aloud, it would be fun for children to freeze before the page turn.

That frozen moment gives them the chance to observe the music box filled with musicians, instruments, and a dancer twirling on one toe, and the gears that work to create the motion…just as that pesky bumblebee buzzes in from the upper left. I love how the draped curtain resembles the leg and foot of a child, with that bumblebee heading toward the toe. It all serves to move the eyes to the right.

And then we turn the page…

Save the twitches,
the itches the fidgets,
and the fixes for another day.

First note the missing comma in the second line. That tiny piece of purposefully omitted punctuation creates a sense of urgency in the directions. DON’T MOVE! And the assonance and internal rhyme is perfect. The illustration zooms in on the music box dancer. She’s now frozen with both toes on the ground, instead of one. The bee is tickling and fiddling with the chandelier, frozen in mid-swing. It creates the sensation of wanting to move, but having to resist that temptation.

Page turn…

But today you are a boat stuck on
a frozen lake
with nowhere to go.

The typography depicting a frozen lake, and the zoomed-in image from under the bell of the music box dancer’s dress, freezes the reader on this page. A full caesura. Perfection.

So now that the child (the dancer/the boat) is frozen, what is processed by the child’s mind?

Instructions for breathing—with fantastical imagery that shows how the breath should happen “sl-owwww-ly” at the pace of a garden snail, steadily like ants “carrying crumbs to their cousins,” and silently as a “giraffe gazing at an African sunset…”

That is all of the teaser I’m going to give you. The careful word choices. The depiction of everything that happens in the mind during the caesura and the tiny actions taken are one delight after another. I’ll just add that owls, hibernating bears, the wind, cats, foxes, squirrels, hawks, and chickadees are conjured, before the child takes action and then launches into a victory dance that will set the eyes spinning. Which is what victory dances should do, especially ones following an encounter with a bee.

This book makes me want to have a bumblebee land on my toe, instead of avoid it. Or even just have one buzz by. Kudos to the author, Cynthia Mackey, and the illustrator, Vikki Zhang. They’ve created a marvelous and memorable dance between text and illustration that will be a read aloud delight! And visual eye candy for kids who love examining illustrations for seek-and-find details.

Activities:

Watch this short film about how scientists at UC Irvine are studying bumblebees to help them and humans.

Check out these facts and other resources about bumblebees from the NatureMapping Program of Washington.

Write a poem about what would go through your mind and what you would do if something else landed on your toe. Maybe an elephant? a hummingbird?

Title: If A Bumblebee Lands on Your Toe

Author: Cynthia Mackey

Illustrator: Vikki Zhang

Publisher: Yeehoo Press, 2025

Ages: PreK- elementary school

Themes: Bumblebees, staying calm, being brave

For more perfect picture book recommendations, please visit Susanna Hill’s website.