Veronika Martenova Charles, illustrated by Annouchka Gravel Galouchko and Stéphan Daigle,
The Birdman
Tundra Books, 2006

Ages 5-8

The 'caged bird' has long been a metaphor to express feelings of imprisonment and longing, and has seldom been more poignantly portrayed than in this real-life story by Toronto-based, award-winning author and illustrator Veronica Martenova Charles. The Birdman tells the story of Noor Nobi, a tailor in Calcutta, India, who spends a goodly part of his low income buying illegally captured birds from a street market, to set them free under a big banyan tree.

The author, having been fascinated by birds all her life, was inspired to write the story by a newspaper article, and soon after contacting the journalist who wrote it, found herself flying to India to meet the men who people call 'the birdman'.

Her telling of his story is as touching as his life seems to be. In the first few pages, we see the image of a nest full of eggs, suggesting life and possibilities; we see a happy Noor Nobi surrounded by his wife and young children, and the colorful baby clothes he sews for a living, hanging from a clothesline stretched across a sunny patio.

One day, an accident, of which we are not given any details, robs him of his family. Struck by grief and unable to cope, for weeks and weeks he wanders aimlessly through the city, unaware of cars, people, noises—imprisoned as he is by his own pain. He sees at the market cages and more cages crammed with birds and, as unexpectedly as his family was taken from him, the birds, symbolising the fragility of life, enter his world, and draw him to theirs: "Only the small, sickly ones were left", he noticed.

After buying one bird and releasing it by a big banyan tree, freeing birds becomes his quiet healing ritual, his mission. Always waiting until the prices drop, every week he buys as many birds as he can afford, nursing them back to health before releasing them in a quiet public ritual that people from all over come to witness. A tailor six days a week, on the seventh day he is the birdman: a panoply of free birds flying around him—his heart soaring with them, his spirit seemingly refreshed through having a greater appreciation for life.

The pictures we see in the five-page afterword, of a happy Noor Nobi, his new family, and the sewing machines once again at work in his workshop, are clear: he was able to overcome his grief and rebuild his life—the freeing of birds still a token effort only he knows the real significance of.

Illustrators Galouchko and Daigle deserve to be showered with praise for their exquisite paintings of brightly colored birds of all kinds.

This book, much like Noor Nobi and the birds themselves, inspires a reverential awe.

Aline Pereira
November 2006