The girl who cried bird by Katherine Collette

Alma is tall, and so basketball is her sport. She is the classic ‘middle child’ - so ironically is overlooked, but it is in the pursuit of the purple-bellied parrot that she stands out. On a family bird watching activity, she makes a rare sighting of a bird that has not been seen for 32 years, but without corroboration it leads her to an impossible task of proving that her word counts as truth. Friends, family, teachers and birdwatchers generally are curious and in two minds about her experience. Can she be trusted? What should she do to encourage them to believe her? Alma is at that pre-teen age when friends and reputations are important, and she is at risk of losing both! This is a fun ‘tall tale’, the second in the series. Alma is quirky, a little prone to weaving truth into knots to justify poor choices and yet is remarkably likeable. Her poor decisions are immediately obvious to readers but not to Alma and we must follow her discomfort throughout the book. She has amazing friends, the obligatory teasers or mean-girl associates, teammates who are accommodating (after all she is very tall and can influence the result of a game), and the usual struggles with family members. 

This is a great book for readers aged 9-13, but I loved it too! This perhaps is slightly coloured by my experience of knowing birders and twitchers and their passions (I have even been a semi-reluctant bird spotter myself), but even without a personal knowledge of the quirky world of Birding, this is a fun story.  There are a smattering of amusing cartoon-style illustrations through the book and some very funny moments, as well as the insights into pre-teen experience, making poor choices, stretching the truth and being distrusted and how this impacts a child’s wellbeing. The story is written with a tongue-in-cheek style from the perspective of Alma and will be a great book to put in the hands of pre-teen girls. With perhaps a hint of the quirkiness of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, this is a series that will be a winner with young readers.

Themes: Birdwatching, Basketball, Pre-teens, Truth and lies, Friendship.

Carolyn Hull