Birds Raise an Unusual Youngster in Flap Your Wings

I’m very familiar with the P. D. Eastman classic Are You My Mother?, and a while back I stumbled upon The Best Nest, which features a female bird who looks a lot like the mother bird in that book, this time with a mate in tow. Now I’ve found yet another Eastman book featuring a pair of birds. They already have a cozy nest for themselves, and it seems they are preparing to welcome a youngster into their home. Then an extra-large egg mysteriously appears in their nest...

Eastman does not introduce Mr. and Mrs. Bird right off the bat in Flap Your Wings. Instead, he first shows us the egg, then a boy who discovers the egg while out on a walk. When no one lays claim to it, the boy, in an effort to be helpful, puts the egg into the nest in a nearby tree. One wonders what would have happened if the boy had simply left the egg alone. Would one of its parents eventually retrieved it? Or would it have been abandoned, meaning that the boy actually saved the unborn creature’s life? That’s unclear, so it’s hard to say whether there’s a lesson in there about whether or not one should intervene in such cases. My initial thought was that the boy should have left well enough alone, but I’m not sure the book entirely supports that idea. After all, the birds turn out to be very good parents.

It’s after the boy goes away that we meet them, both bright blue birds with pale yellow stomachs, differentiated from each other by the fact that Mrs. Bird wears a red handkerchief. They both know that this is not their egg, but they feel a duty to keep it warm until it hatches and then raise whatever comes out of it. Little do they expect that it will hatch an alligator!  This enormous baby comes with a set of sharp teeth and a monstrous appetite, so the birds spend the next few weeks tirelessly collecting food, with Mrs. Bird generally finding things like butterflies and berries and Mr. Bird hunting down icky stuff like spiders and centipedes. But how long can a bird’s nest sustain such a big reptile?

This reminded me a bit of the classic Disney short Lambert the Sheepish Lion. In that story, a mother sheep accidentally receives a baby lion from the stork, but she raises him as her own and he eventually becomes a valued member of the flock. In this case, it’s Mr. Bird who is really insistent that they keep the egg and then raise it. Mrs. Bird is more noncommittal. Nonetheless, both of them work hard to provide for their unconventional child’s needs. Then, when he outgrows the nest, they gently encourage him to take flight. There’s just one problem, of course; he doesn’t have any wings!

Flap Your Wings is a fun book, full of vibrant color and amusing expressions as the birds try to figure out how to deal with this unexpected change in their family life. It’s a Beginner Book, written at the same basic level as the other Eastman books mentioned above, with a few short sentences per page. It’s funny to watch the birds feeding this alligator bugs and satisfying to see how much trouble they go to for a youngster of a completely different species. While I’m not sure the story hangs together quite as well as Eastman’s other bird books, the premise is cute, and the pictures are a hoot. Ultimately a celebration of both nature and nurture, Flap Your Wings is silly but charming.