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
What if the market was closed when you wanted to bake a pie? You could embark for Europe, learn Italian en route, and pick up some semolina wheat in Italy, an egg in France, kurundu bark for cinnamon in Sri Lanka, and an entire cow in England (butter) before coming home via Jamaica (sugar) and Vermont (apples). The expertly designed illustrations in which a dark-haired lass journeys by various means to these interesting places to get her groceries are lovely and lively, and the narrative, too, travels at a spritely pace. The journey is neither quite logical enough to be truly informative nor quite bizarre enough to be satisfyingly silly, while the rich, sweet recipe that's appended will take some adult assistance. Still, fun. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: May 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-83705-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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