Subtle foreshadowing and well-crafted metaphors and similes [in The Bumblebee Flies Anyway] enable readers to mentally visualize setting, action, and characters; and there is a rhythm to Cormier's writing that compels reader reaction much the way a musical score underlines emotion in films. The story's climactic blockbuster is marred only slightly by a double denouement—one weak, the other fitting. The depressing situation aside, the overall effect is one of a reaffirmation of the humanity of humankind that contrasts with the images projected by The Chocolate War, I Am the Cheese, and After the First Death. (p. 38)

Sally Estes, in a review of "The Bumblebee Flies Anyway," in Booklist, Vol. 80, No. 1, September 1, 1983, pp. 37-8.