All readers judge books by their covers and then the author's name (if it is familiar) and then the blurb. Begin with the one-word title. Tweet is a word we all associate with Twitter and the internet and the spreading of informed and uninformed ideas. Perhaps we also think of this as the chatter, often mindless, of social media. Now look more closely at the cover and you can see a boy in silhouette with a small yellow and green budgie (bird). Then zoom in even closer and the speech bubble which contains the word tweet is shown coming from the bird not the boy. This is intriguing. Now onto the author. I guess most Australian young readers and nearly all Australian teachers and Teacher-Librarians have heard, and also have read, a book to two by Morris Gleitzman. After all he started writing in 1987. His first book was The Other Facts of Life. In 1987 I had been working in my first school library in a small country town for just two years. From then on we collected every book he wrote and I read nearly all of them. In fact he is the author of over forty titles. See the covers of most of these at the end of this post.
The one thing that distinguishes a Morris Gleitzman book, from books by other writers, is his unique 'voice'. I use the term naive protagonist. In this book Clyde (he is the budgie from the front cover) and Jay, both have this 'voice' albeit one is a boy, and one is a bird. I probably should spend more time thinking about why the bird has a human name and the boy is named after a bird but that might relate to the fact that Jay's parents are ornithologists.
In a pattern you are sure to have encountered in many, many books, Jay's parents are absent. In fact, they are missing. They set off for Africa to study birds and they have not returned and no one seems to be able to contact them. The mission to find the lost parents is one of the issues that drives the plot of this book. There is one other adult in Jay's life, but Morris Gleitzman removes him from the story very early on - spoiler alert - sadly Poppa is taken to hospital where he dies. That neatly sets up the plot of Jay and Clyde and later a few other unlikely friends who now have to 'save the world'.
The other issue that keeps you turning the pages of this long book (348 pages) is the mystery of the other birds who keep showing up in their hundreds disrupting human activities. This is happening in the city where Jay lives but later we discover it is happening around the world. Why are the birds stopping traffic? Do they have a message? Yes they do. Humans need to listen but birds and humans do not speak the same language. Luckily Clyde is part human because he has been a pet. He can 'talk' to Jay and over time he learns how to communicate with other wild birds. It is also Clyde who makes the most important friends - a bird named Dora (she is a galah) and another bird - a Kea. Just in case you don't know a kea is a large parrot from New Zealand.
The birds are showing up to highlight the environmental issues facing our world today. This reminded me of this brilliant book by Christopher Cheng (another well-known Australian author).
Morris Gleitzman explains about the environmental issues he raises in his book:
But it doesn't end there. You'll notice that, as well as all these other problems, Tweet contains one other problem that's so big, none of the characters know how to solve it. Not even Jay and Clyde's friends Maxine and Dora, who are super-smart. Please don't fret. Not every problem in a story has to be solved by the last page. Sometimes just discovering new ways to think about problems is the biggest adventure of all.
I mentioned this is a long book, but the chapters are very, very short and the viewpoints keep alternating between Jay and Clyde, so I found myself swept along with the story and I was easily able to finish the whole book over a couple of days. I think you will need to explain this to your library readers because the size of this book might daunt them but really there are so many funny, almost laugh out loud, moments and Clyde especially is such an endearing character I do think young readers aged 10+ will really enjoy this book. And it is sure to make them curious to read other books by Morris Gleitzman beyond his World War II series.
Publisher blurb: Birds. Lots of birds. The people of the world are puzzled. Their feathered friends are trying to tell them something, and they’re not sure what it is. Then a boy and his pet budgie discover the secret. Join Jay and Clyde, and their friends Maxine and Dora, on an exciting, funny, risky journey to save their families. And every other family too.
Here are a few text quotes which I was pleased to see were also mentioned in the teachers notes (see below):
"I know you're fresh out of the cage ... but don't be a dope. This is what we birds do. We look out for each other, right?"
"Something terrible's happening. Huge numbers of birds have started acting crazy. Putting themselves in crazy danger."
"The birds are making a big nuisance of themselves to punish humans for being so cruel. And they don't have a clue how much more cruel that'll make humans be towards them."
"Leaders have two basic things ... Ideas and armies. And the armies are usually bigger than the ideas."
Here are some very detailed teachers notes with discussion questions from the publisher.
Check out some reviews:
Companion books:
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