Zetta Elliott, illustrated by Shadra Strickland,
Bird
Lee & Low Books, 2008.

Ages 8-12

Zetta Elliott’s poetic Bird, a powerful first-person testament to the healing power of art, tells the story of a young African-American boy grieving the loss of both his beloved grandfather and his older brother, Marcus. Nicknamed Bird because as a baby he cheeped “just like a baby bird/ in its nest, waiting to be fed,” he loves to draw. He’s not very good yet, he tells us, but his grandfather’s friend, Uncle Son, who becomes a surrogate grandparent, advises him, “… that’s how/ you get good at a thing - / do it over and over/ until you can practically do it/ with your eyes closed.”

When Marcus, a talented graffiti artist and loving sibling before his fatal drug addiction, stole from the family, he was locked out of their home. Bird last saw him when he returned secretly to give his brother a book about birds, passing it through the door Bird had opened just a crack, a chain lock still separating the boys.

After Marcus’ death, Bird studies birds and learns their names from his book. He wishes he could have fixed Marcus. “You can fix a broken wing with a splint,” says Uncle Son, a former pilot. “But you can’t fix a broken soul.” Perhaps Bird’s grandfather went to heaven to keep his eye on Marcus, he suggests. “That made sense to me,” Bird tells us, looking up at a “pink and silver blanket” of a sky. He goes home and draws a picture, as he has of many other important scenes, “so I wouldn’t forget.”

The metaphor of flight figures prominently in Bird. Canadian-born Zetta Elliott, who teaches at Mt. Holyoke, has said in a web interview that Bird came out of her interest in folk stories of slaves who flew away back to Africa as well as from her own personal experience. Bird, which won a 2005 Lee & Low New Voices Award, is her first children’s book. But her restrained, intimate tone and complex narrative structure reflect a seasoned writerly imagination. She treats the deep questions of human life respectfully and forthrightly.

Shadra Strickland sensitively illustrates Bird’s experiences and flashback memories in warm, pastoral watercolors and depicts Bird’s own artistic efforts in charming black and white. On one memorable double page, a line drawing of Charlie Parker’s face as he blows into a huge saxophone segues into a watercolor of the boy Bird, eyes closed, fingering the line-drawn sax.

Young readers may be inspired to find their own means of expression through Bird’s example. As Uncle Son says of Bird’s fascination with Parker, “But don’t you waste your time trying to be like him/. You just remember,/ everybody got their somethin’./ And that includes you.”

Charlotte Richardson
February 2009