The Day I Became a Bird by Ingrid Chabbert
Publisher: Kids Can Press
Genre: Childrens, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (40 pages)
Age Recommendation: 6+
Heat Level: Sweet
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Review by: AstilbeThe day he starts school, a young boy falls in love for the very first time. Sylvia sits in front of him at school, and he’s so in love with her, she’s all he can see. But sadly, Sylvia doesn’t see him. In fact, it seems the only thing Sylvia has eyes for is birds. There are birds on her pants and dresses. She wears bird barrettes in her hair. She draws birds on her notebooks and folders. And when she speaks, her voice sounds like birdsong. So in a bold attempt to get Sylvia’s attention, the boy decides to go to school dressed up as a bird. He endures the stares and giggles of his classmates, and a great deal of discomfort, but the boy doesn’t care. Because when it comes to love, sometimes you have no choice but to follow your heart and spread your wings.
In this sweetly funny picture book, Ingrid Chabbert perfectly captures the emotional essence of a child’s first love. The boy’s voice as narrator is realistic and endearing as he engagingly and honestly shares the wonder of his experience. With imagination and gentle humor, Guridi uses spare lines in mostly black and white drawings to tenderly express the poignant heart of the story. This book offers a terrific exploration of young children’s self-discovery and self-expression, as well as the early development of social skills. It makes a wonderful read-aloud to launch a classroom discussion about relationships and feelings.
There’s nothing like feeling a crush for the first time.
I was pleased with how well I got to know the main character even though the narrator never revealed his name. This is a difficult thing to accomplish, especially in a children’s picture book where there often isn’t a ton of room for character development in general. Ms. Chabbert used the time she had wisely, though, and I felt like I knew the main character’s personality really well by the end of his experiment.
The ending was a disappointment. The plot spent so much time building up to what would happen when Sylvia noticed his costume that I was expecting it would keep that energy going through the last scene. When I read the final page, I was surprised by how abruptly it had ended and how little closure I felt about what I’d just read. If not for this issue, I would have chosen a higher rating as I loved the beginning and middle of it.
One of the things that first attracted me to this tale was how the main character was going to go through an ordinary school day while wearing such a bulky costume. There were all sorts of practical questions I had about how a kid would do everything from spend his time at recess to react to bad weather while wearing a bird costume. I liked the fact that the narrator spent so much time showing how this all worked once the boy was at school and didn’t have his parents or other relatives around to help him.
The Day I Became a Bird was a heartwarming look at a child’s first crush.
