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Bird
John Steptoe Award for New Talent in Illustrations Winner - American Library Association (ALA)
In this gentle, award-winning picture book, an African American boy nicknamed Bird uses drawing as a creative outlet as he struggles to make sense of his grandfather's death and his brother's drug addiction.
Young Mekhai, better known as Bird, loves to draw. With drawings, he can erase the things that don't turn out right. In real life, problems aren't so easily fixed.
As Bird struggles to understand the death of his beloved grandfather and his older brother's drug addiction, he escapes into his art. Drawing is an outlet for Bird's emotions and imagination, and provides a path to making sense of his world. In time, with the help of his grandfather's friend, Bird finds his own special somethin' and wings to fly.
Told with spare grace, Bird is a touching look at a young boy coping with real-life troubles. Readers will be heartened by Bird's quiet resilience, and moved by the healing power of putting pencil to paper.
Bird, the recipient of Lee & Low's New Voices Award Honor, is the first picture book of both Zetta Elliot and Shadra Strickland.
Book Details
- Publisher: Lee & Low Books
- Publish Date: Mar 1st, 2017
- Pages: 48
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 9.40in - 7.30in - 0.20in - 0.35lb
- EAN: 9781620143483
- Recommended age: 07-10
- Categories: • African American & Black• Family - Multigenerational• Social Themes - Death, Grief, Bereavement
About the Author
Shadra Strickland is the illustrator of several children's books including Lee & Low's Bird, winner of the Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award and the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent in Illustration. Along with illustrating and writing stories, Strickland loves to make drawings during her travels around the country and the world. She lives in Baltimore, where she also teaches illustration at Maryland Institute College of Art. Her website is jumpin.shadrastrickland.com.
Zetta Elliott is an accomplished poet, playwright, author, and African American studies scholar. As a young girl she loved to escape into a good book and began writing as a way to create "a world that was better than my own." Elliott lives in Brooklyn, New York. To learn more about Zetta Elliot, visit her at ZettaElliott.com or at her blog, Fledgling.
Praise for this book
* "Elliott's sensitivity for her subjects resonates with Strickland's distinctive mixed-media art... With unusual depth and raw conviction, Elliott's child-centered narrative excels in this debut." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"In this beautiful picture book for older readers, Elliott and Strickland tell a moving story in spare free verse and clear mixed-media pictures of an African American boy who loves to draw... The spacious scenes of the boy beneath birds soaring high above the city streets echoes what Bird discovers: that art can inspire, comfort, and elevate." -- Booklist
"In a promising debut for both Elliott and Strickland, this picture book tells a poignant story about a boy whose loving family, friends and a gift for drawing help him navigate difficult emotions surrounding the deaths of his grandfather and drug-addicted brother. A complicated weaving of impressive watercolor, gouache, charcoal and ink drawings amplifies the metaphors and action of the poetic text as it combines black-and-white with color." -- Publishers Weekly
"Bird's own pencil drawings of city life and the repetition of Marcus's symbolic bright cap add interest and meaning to the visual narrative. From a first-time author and illustrator comes a sad truth of contemporary life successfully leavened with hopeful optimism." -- School Library Journal
John Steptoe Award for New Talent in Illustrations Winner - American Library Association (ALA)
ALSC Notable Children's Books - American Library Association (ALA)
Best Books - Kirkus Reviews
Best Children's Books of the Year - Bank Street College of Education
Children's Books of the Year - Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Ezra Jack Keats Illustrator Award Winner - Grummond Children's Literature Collection
West Virginia Children's Choice Book Award - West Virginia Library Commission