Whenever I see a new book by George Ella Lyon, I immediately take notice. Her most beloved form of writing is poetry where she provides us with eloquent lyrical verse in each of her books she delivers. I can hear her voice as I read through her books, much like the voice you hear that can be heard on YouTube videos or on her website page where you can find her reading her books and poems. In this new book, Time to Fly, I can vividly hear Lyon’s voice as she narrates a mother bird urging her last baby bird to leave the nest and learn to fly on her own. Authors who write stories where you can hear them are the types of books that I gravitate to because of their ability to be a storyteller and relay the characters’ voices brilliantly.
In this familiar story line that is narrated through two voices, mother bird encourages baby bird to leave the nest by saying lines such as, “A little lift, a little lurch, Fly on over to my perch.” For every encouragement baby bird finds a reason not to leave by tweeting back, “Nest is best.” Of course, baby bird does give it a go when mother bird entices him with a little snack and baby bird ventures out a bit further with each encouragement. Eventually baby bird leaves the nest to discover that “I’m on my way to everywhere” as the story comes to an end.
I am drawn to illustrators who have the gift to demonstrate the environment in all its glory. The digital art of print making and watercolor that Stephanie Fizer Coleman employs in her illustrations for this book captures the natural habitat of the robins. She uses multiple viewpoints as she illustrates the wide-open spaces of the sky above and the ground below as baby bird moves away from the nest with each encouragement from mother bird. Her renderings are simplistic and depict the natural setting where baby bird is afraid to venture out into the wild where hawks may be hunting. Several of Stephanie’s other themes in her illustrated books focus on flora and fauna such as Bird Count (Richmond, 2019), Birds of a Feather (Singh, 2021) and Hidden World: Forest (Walden, 2018). Coleman’s ability to draw you into her nature-settings make this author-illustrator a perfect match. I wonder if the reason why the illustrations coincide so well with this text could be because both the author and illustrator come from rural areas where bird watching is abundant due to their similarities of where they each live (Kentucky and West Virginia)? I hope to see more collaborations with these two in the future. -Recommended by Kathleen Crawford-McKinney, Associate Professor Wayne State University.
Title: Time to Fly
Author: George Ella Lyon
Illustrator: Stephanie Fizer Coleman
ISBN: 9781534474109
Publisher: Atheneum for Young Readers
Pub Date: July 26, 2022
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- Themes: George Ella Lyon, Kathleen Crawford-Mckinney, Stephanie Fizer Coleman, Time to Fly
- Descriptors: WOW Recommends