Helen's Birds

Regular price €18.99
Quantity:
In stock with our UK publisher. 14-28 days
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days
14 days return policy Shipping & Delivery
A01=Sara Cassidy
A12=Sophie Casson
acceptance
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
appreciation
Author_Sara Cassidy
Author_Sophie Casson
automatic-update
bird watching
Category1=Kids
Category=XAK
Category=YFB
Category=YFW
Category=YXG
Category=YXHB
Category=YXS
CC Literature Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
CC Literature Key Ideas and Details
Common Core aligned
community
connecting
COP=Canada
coping with change
death and bereavement
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_childrens
eq_fiction
eq_graphic-novels-manga
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_personal-social-topics
eq_teenage-young-adult
finding hope
Globe 100 Best Books
grade 4
grade 5
grade 6
grief and loss
growing up
inferring
intergenerational friendships
Language_English
literary graphic novel
low level wordless text
new neighbor
Ontario Library Association Best Bets
PA=Available
picture book
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
respect for envrionment
silent
softlaunch
stages of grief
summarizing
unexpected loss

Product details

  • ISBN 9781773060385
  • Weight: 399g
  • Dimensions: 209 x 247mm
  • Publication Date: 17 Oct 2019
  • Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd ,Canada
  • Publication City/Country: CA
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
Secure checkout Fast Shipping Easy returns

From Sara Cassidy, acclaimed author of A Boy Named Queen, comes a stunning wordless graphic novel about friendship, loss and hope.

For as long as Saanvi can remember, she has been friends with her elderly neighbor Helen. They play cards and garden together and, especially, care for the wild birds that visit Helen’s yard. When Helen dies suddenly, a “For Sale” sign goes up, and movers arrive, emptying the house of its furniture and stripping the yard of its birdfeeders. The sparrows and hummingbirds disappear.

Soon a bulldozer tears down Helen’s house. All winter, Saanvi walks numbly past the property as developers begin to build condos. Then one spring day, amid the dust and turmoil of construction, she finds a weathered playing card wedged between two rocks. She holds it to her chest, and finally sobs.

After a tearful night, Saanvi wakes inspired. She slathers peanut butter on pinecones to hang from tree branches, hammers together a birdhouse from scrap wood and drags a kitchen stool outside to hold a bowl of water. Finally, she retrieves a nest that has been unraveling on Helen’s old property and places it in a tree in her own yard. Saanvi’s yard soon fills with Helen’s birds. They have a home again.

This beautifully illustrated, wordless graphic novel shows Saanvi’s journey through close friendship, then hollowing loss and change, until she finally finds hope.

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.1
Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

SARA CASSIDY is a journalist, editor and the author of twenty children’s books. Her books have won the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize and been Junior Library Guild selections. They have been nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award in Young People's Literature, Chocolate Lily Award, Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award, Diamond Willow Award, Silver Birch Express Award and the Sunburst Award. Sara lives in Victoria, British Columbia. SOPHIE CASSON illustrated The Prisoner and the Writer, written by Heather Camlot, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards Best Children’s Book. Her other books include The Artist and Me by Shane Peacock, a finalist for the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award and Helen’s Birds by Sara Cassidy. Sophie’s work has also appeared in the Globe and Mail, the New York Times and Nature, as well as in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Sophie lives in Montreal, Quebec.

More from this author