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Review of the Day: Grumpy Bird (Part One)October 15, 2007 Grumpy Bird and me, we got off to a rough start. I first laid eye on the impossibly irritable fowl one day while traipsing about a local bookstore. There on an upper shelf sat, "Grumpy Bird". He was grumpy. He was a bird. With so many other books vying for my attention I slipped the book from the shelf and gave it a quick once over. Flip flip flip, back on the shelf it went, and I didn't think of it again for many months. Really, not until a colleague essentially grabbed me by the lapels and said to me, "You MUST love this book!!!", and proceeded to demonstrate the readability of the title did I have to concede that I had misjudged "Grumpy". Worse still, what I had in my hands was an exceedingly rare addition to my collection of must-have readalouds. What on earth was I thinking when I didn't pay Tankard's book the proper amount of respect? So now I am here to right a great wrong. If you, like myself, have merely glimpsed at a copy of this book and then continued on with your sweet little lives, stop whatever it is that you are doing and give "Grumpy Bird" the attention he so desperately deserves. You'll never look at an avian grumpfest the same way again. It happens. One day you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or, in this particular case, nest. When Bird woke up one day he was, not to put too fine a point on it, grumpy. With grumpiness comes a kind of ennui so, without eating, playing, or flying, Bird goes for a walk. If he was hoping for solitude, though, this probably wasn't the best plan. As Bird meets up with various friends they all join him for his stroll. First Sheep. Then Rabbit. Then Raccoon. By the time Beaver and Fox join the fun the whole group has taken on the appearance of a rather low-key parade. Slowly Bird realizes that what he does (like lifting a leg or jumping) the others do too. Cheered by this and no longer grumpy, Bird encourages everyone to join him at his home for a snack. The final shot in the book is of a remarkably peppy Bird offering an enormous worm to his somewhat dumbstruck following. This book is a two-parter charmer. Part one is the choice of wording and part two the illustrations. In terms of readaloud possibilities, Tankard knows how to use the rule of basic repetition and make it familiar but increasingly funny as the story continues. When Bird does his walking he is asked over and over what he's up to by the other animals. The first time is a terse, "Walking". The second is a pointed, "I'm walking . . . It's no fun." With each additional animal Bird gets more and more frustrated until he's finally saying, "WHY DOES EVERYONE WANT TO KNOW WHAT I'M DOING?! . . . I'm just walking, okay?" As any person who has ever read to a large group of kids knows, many books work well one-on-one, but only a few books work with large groups. Because Tankard's book sets up all kinds of possibilities in terms of voice and increasing volume, I can't wait until I get another group of kids in my library so that I can break out Bird's snarky bon mot, "Let me give you a hint . . . You do it by placing one foot in front of the other."
Posted by Elizabeth Bird on October 15, 2007 | Comments (0)
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