The touching wartime account of a separated family and their joyful reunion.
A girl worries about her father and pet bird, trapped by war, in this touching debut picture book by Kuburovic, based on her own experiences as a child in Sarajevo.
When Sasha was a little girl staying at her grandmother’s house, she bought a small, blue budgie, even though she knew her father didn’t want a pet bird in the house. But after her father sees the bird, he relents, and Riki becomes part of their family. The pet bird learns to speak a few phrases, watches television with Sasha’s parents, and even waits on a chair in Sasha’s room for her to wake up every morning. But budgies don’t live as long as humans, and when Sasha is a teenager, Riki gets sick and dies. The family misses him so much that Sasha’s father buys her a new budgie, whom they name after the first one. Sasha has to leave home to go to college, and soon war breaks out in her hometown of Sarajevo. Although Sasha and her mother are able to escape to Valjevo with Sasha’s grandmother, Riki and Sasha’s father are stuck in Sarajevo. Sasha sends care packages of food and seed to her father, who, for two years, successfully keeps Riki alive despite cruel winters with no heat or electricity. When they are finally able to leave the city, Riki becomes one of the only pets—and almost certainly the only budgie!—to survive the war. Brightly colored illustrations bring Sasha and the budgies to life, although the major difference between Sasha as a small girl and Sasha as she grows older is the length of her hair (she wears it shorter as a college student). Kuburovic tells her story in a matter-of-fact tone, neither romanticizing nor downplaying the struggles of those stuck in Sarajevo during the war years. While the story is about the birds, children may well become interested in knowing more about Sasha’s home country and the war that kept her apart from her father. Children interested in history, especially independent readers in upper elementary school, will find that these elements provide an entry point that makes it easy to identify with the larger story.
The touching wartime account of a separated family and their joyful reunion.Pub Date: June 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-46-026200-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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