"We would face a gray world without bees," writes Hanna Harms in her piercing graphic nonfiction debut, Milk Without Honey, translated from the German by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp. With strategic precision, Harms focuses on the plight of wild and domestic bees that are ravaged by invasive mites, climate change, and monocultural agricultural systems. But she does not neglect the broader impact of the worldwide destruction of insects: "A third of global crop production depends on pollination, but three-quarters of all cultivated plants benefit from pollination," which isn't accomplished by bees alone--many other insects participate.
Harms's rather grim analysis is lightened by her sketched graphic style and a note of hope at the end. An illustrator and comics author, she employs a minimalist aesthetic and a palette of gray, white, black, yellow, and peach to maximize the impact of her message. The effect is elegant yet approachable, with the pencil lines softening the color contrasts. Some pages contain a setup that relies on boxes and panels, while others forgo any container and use negative space brilliantly.
The sparse narrative is sandwiched by a foreword from author Sarah Wyndham Lewis that serves as a call to action to help the bees, and a dense afterword by bee expert Jürgen Tautz, in which he underscores how dire the rapid decline of insect species is and what the consequences will be if humans don't make changes. Although Milk Without Honey is serious, Harms ensures readers leave with a glimmer of optimism for the future, and more importantly, actions they can take to help. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator