A little redbird is injured and cannot fly south for the winter. She needs to find a new shelter so she asks a variety of trees in the forest if they can help her. Silver Birch, oak, and maple all say no. A pine tree hears her cries then a blue spruce offers further help and finally the juniper offers her berries as food and for their healing properties.
"So it is said, because of their act of kindness, not only do the fir, spruce, and juniper trees get to keep their leaves in winter ..."
If you are working in a school library or you collect books for your own shelves it is always well worth perusing sale sections in bookstore. This book retails for over AUS$36 but my friend from Kinderbookswitheverything found it in one of our big city chain bookstores for just AUS$14. This book is not about Australian trees of course but it is a terrific example of a pourquoi story and so it is one you could use as a companion text when you explore our indigenous dreaming stories.
Kirkus do identify one fairly serious error in this book - again it is not something entirely relevant to us here in Australia - only male cardinal birds are red but in this book it is the female who searches for a safety among the trees. On this blog post you can find some useful websites and activities to use with this book. And here you can read more book details.
Here are books by Annemarie Riley Guertin - she has another pourquoi story called How the Finch got his colours.
Here is the website for Spanish illustrator Helena Perez Garcia. She is the illustrator of a book on my shopping list about the suffragette Ethel Smyth entitled Rise up with a song.
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