Customer Reviews

Birdsong

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Not only is this book beautifully illustrated, it will also take your child on a journey through the seasons all in one day. They will be able to wake with the calls of crows and go to sleep to the hoots of an owl. I highly recommend this book to all young readers especially if they love birds and their birdsongs.

This is one gorgeous book! It covers an unusual topic--bird songs, in a beautiful way. Each bird is drawn in a different geographical setting, accompanied by a different child, so it is also a multicultural experience. Plus it is sumptiously illustrated. It is one of the best bird books that covers birdsong for young readers that I have ever seen, and I've been looking/teaching for 20 years.

This work has great appeal to me as it includes several elements that are of great interest and central to my being; birds, nature, children, good writing and good art. This work was published in 1997 and holds up very well, even to this day.

As the author of this book has noted in her "story teller's note," "Birds are everywhere. Throughout the ages, poets, scholars and common folk have been fascinated by the songs of birds. Sometimes their whistles, trills, and chirps have reminded people of words or sounds they know; those words or sounds are frequently used to describe the songs of many birds - and especially to help us identify birds in the wild." Well the author and illustrator of this wonderful work have done an absolutely superb job in introducing the calls of several species of birds, and done it is a manner that is a delight to the ear and eye.

Each page represents a different species of bird; sometimes two or three, and each page has a different geographical setting. This is a multicultural work, so the children depicted here, are a wonderful mix of different cultures and backgrounds. The author has nailed down the birdsongs of each bird represented here, from the caw, caw, caw of the common crow, to the Gawk! Gawk! of the heron. One of my favorites (I suppose because I spend so much time watching and trying to photograph them) is the Kingfisher. The Rickity-crik-crik, Rickity-crik-crik is quite accurate. Each page shows the children interacting with nature while watching or performing some other activity. The text and the illustrations go perfectly together.

The art work in this book is rather stunning. The artist, Robert Florczak, has used Tombrow water-based markers, gouache, colored pencil, and opaque ink on blueprint paper to produce some stunning, semi-realistic paintings that depict the birds and their natural surroundings perfectly. The artist has given us a further treat in that he has surrounded each paining with a floral boarder that is down right reminiscent of Victorian designs, another of my favorite things!

This work is a lot of fun to read to children. I am particularly good at bird calls, which I suppose helps, but all the children I have read this one to seem to enjoy it quite a lot and I do get requests for rereads. This is always a good sign. The reading designation on this one is ages 4 through 8 but to be honest, I have found children much older than eight that truly enjoy this work. This is a good read along as well as a work that the kids can just gaze at. It should also be noted that the School Library Journal has designated this story as "boring." To be honest with you, and not trying to be unkind to the folks at the School Library Journal, if a reader cannot find some excitement is this book, or when reading it to children, cannot make it exciting, then this is a pure act of laziness on the part of the adult reader.

We have a great text, wonderful art work, a learning tool and a fun read that children enjoy. Really, what more could you want?

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks