Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Little Bird Lost by Patricia Hegarty illustrated by Sebastiaan Van Doninck

It is time for Little Bird to fly away with his flock but he has badly damaged his wing in a flying accident. Luckily Little Bird meets Deer and Deer kindly offers to carry Little Bird. They set off ask advice from the animals in the forest. Bear has told them the flock will be heading towards the sun to find somewhere warm.

Deer and Little Bird walk through the days of Summer, Autumn, Winter and finally in Spring Little Bird is reunited with his flock and in a beautiful moment Deer finds a special friend too. Along the way the pair of new friends play games, share stories and sing songs.

This is a perfect little easy chapter book for newly independent readers.It has a predictable structure (following the seasons), an strong emotional arc and best of all some sweet touches of humour. I especially laughed at the character of Porcupine.  It is so wonderful to see the care the publisher, Little Tiger, have taken with this book. The illustrations are vibrant and at times quite powerful (take a look a the attack of the wolf), the cover is appealing, the end papers are fun images of Little Bird and his crazy antics and most of all I appreciate the beautiful quality of the paper used in Little Bird Lost and other books in this series. There are eleven titles so far. Here are some I have on my "to read" list:



Take a look at the art of Dutch illustrator Sebastiaan Van Doninck.  I have talked about another book by Patricia Hegarty in a previous post - Bee. She is the author of several books illustrated by the brilliant illustrator Britta Teckentrup.

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