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Title: Flight of the Bumblebee

Author: Huang Beijia

Translator: Nicky Harman

Illustrator:

Publisher: Balestier Press

Date Published: 2022

Format: Paperback

Genre:

Book Category: Fiction

Age Range: 12+

Original Title: First published in Chinese by Phoenix Juvenile and Children's Publishing Ltd, China, 2018

Country of Origin: China

Flight of the Bumblebee

by Huang Beijia
Age Range: 12+

The story begins with octogenarian Orange looking back to her childhood in 1937 when she was eight years old and the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, part of World War II. Orange and her family are uprooted from their home on the campus of the University of Nanking, Nanjing, China, where her father is the dean of the Agricultural College when they are forced to flee from the Japanese bombing raids. They take refuge in Chengdu, West China and settle in a small house in the university district of Huaxi Fields.

Orange’s lively narrative relays all the trials and tribulations of growing up with her father, hard-working mother and sisters Shuya and Su, brothers Kejun and Kid and Tianlu an orphan, the son of her father’s close friend. In the early days of the war, the irrepressible and feisty Orange hardly notices how hard life is for the adults, particularly her mother, as she is much too busy getting into scrapes from a mishap in a Mulberry tree to stealing a pencil case, she tells us about her everyday life of school, friends, laughter and music.

As Orange begins to grow up and the war moves ever closer and begins to impact much more on her life from, the air raids, the Flying Tigers (composed of pilots of the USA Air Corps, Navy and Marine Corps based in Kunming to Kejun and Tianlu joining up to fight, she experiences the heartbreak of love and loss.

Chinese author Huang Beijia is one of China’s most important children’s writers. Orange is a bubbly child full of vitality and her zest for life is infectious. Through her eyes, the reader can gain an understanding of what life was like during those war years for the Chinese people. A thread running through the book is the piece of music known as ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ (also the title of the book), an orchestral interlude from the opera The Tale of the Tsar Saltan by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1899-1900 which was intended to musically evoke bumblebees in flight. This piece of music takes on an importance for both Orange and Tianlu, a theme that is returned to throughout the book.

Beijia has written an incredibly powerful and poignant book, exquisitely translated by Nicky Harmen.