HOW TO MAKE A BIRD

A child imagines, designs, and builds a bird only to let it go and watch it soar through the clouds.

The child—a preteen, with pale skin and tousled brown hair—lives, apparently alone, in an elevated stilt house on a beach. The house stands precariously on tilting legs and is painted, as are many of the landscapes in the book, with a slightly distorted perspective, as if viewed through a fish-eye lens. The child collects tiny, hollow bones and shapes them into a bird; adds feathers; gives the creature a heart, eyes, beak, claws, and a song; and adds “final touches, the way an artist adds her last few brushstrokes, her tiny signature.” In one spread, it appears as if the child could be gently breathing life into the creature. Standing atop the teetering house, the child releases the bird and feels simultaneously “a kind of sadness, a kind of happiness.” The book’s measured pacing builds tension (“Breathe deeply and take your time”) as readers witness the creative artist at work. Observant readers will catch subtle visual details that flesh out more of this lyrical, visually beguiling tale. This story, infused with an ethereal, wondrous tone, is for creative souls everywhere, those who know what it is to imagine something and to experience the joy of bringing it to life with care—and the bittersweet feeling of letting it go and moving on. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10.9-by-20.2-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)

Imaginatively stirring and altogether haunting, this one stays with you.