Look Up!: Fontaine the Pigeon Starts a Revolution

Gr 1-3–The kids will not see this coming. Start the story hour with any of Mo Willems’s “Pigeon” books, then show them what pigeons can really do—especially when they collaborate. Fontaine, the pigeon, is dismayed by the hordes of people below his perch staring into their screens and ignoring the fabulous teeming life all around them. Fontaine “got so tired of all the insanity. He dreamed up all the ways he could wake up humanity.” It’s actually just one way: He organizes all the other pigeons to do what they do best—perfect for gross-out loving children—in a targeted effort to take out the screens, one by one. The gloppy mess they fire, with astonishing accuracy, makes one person suggest that perhaps the birds are trying to tell them something. Lesson learned, and there is dancing in the streets. This tale is told in Gondolfi’s casual rhyming text; the goal is not perfect scansion but the compelling idea, its execution, and the revolution itself. Romanick’s art offers many hilarious moments, with a diverse street crew, a wide array of birds/comrades, and suspense as the first “bomb” is dropped.