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.

Everyone is Good for Something, Sunbathing Alligators (or Crocodiles) Included

James Marshall is probably best known for his books about George and Martha, a pair of hippos who are very good friends. But he wrote quite a few books about a variety of different creatures, and Willis contains quite an array of animals within its pages. The titular character is an alligator - or is it a crocodile? Marshall never identifies his species for us, so we’re left to our own familiarity with reptilian biology on that one. Suffice it to say that Willis is a large, unhappy, scaly creature. Rather than lurking in a swamp as most of his species might be content to do, Willis insists on lounging on the beach. Unfortunately, his eyes aren’t so good, and they are extremely irritated by the sunlight. So instead of enjoying his exotic surroundings, he spends his days moping, and as the book opens, we find him dampening the sand with his salty tears.

 

Happily for him and us, three kind-hearted strangers happen upon him in his misery. The ring-leader is a large pink bird on a bicycle, and riding in baskets on either end are a snake and lobster, both green. Lobster doesn’t have much to say, fond as he is of going to sleep. Snake is a bit more talkative, and he’s very eager to help Willis purchase a pair of sunglasses for 29 cents so he can enjoy the beach like everyone else. But Bird is the real go-getter, and he has the logical idea that they should work to earn the remaining 19 cents, after the dime the snake has agreed to contribute.

What follows is a series of ridiculous mishaps as the new friends attempt several jobs, finding themselves hopelessly inept when it comes to each of them. Their disastrous efforts are amusing, as is the notion of buying something for 29 cents or being paid 19 cents for a grueling task. The illustrations are simplistic, flat and mostly limited to the same shades of pink, yellow and green. There is great whimsy in their lack of frills. I’m especially fond of one picture, in which we see Bird glaring disapprovingly down at Snake, who, with a pink ribbon around his neck, innocently hold a dime in his mouth as an offering to Willis to buy himself the comfort he seeks.

After all their misadventures, the friends wise up a bit by deciding to figure out just what it is that they are particularly good at. Unsurprisingly, Lobster announces that he excels at sleeping, and it’s rather logical that the Snake happens to be a good hypnotist. Willis and Bird have more unexpected talents, but each has something impressive to share, so they finally decide to earn the sunglasses by putting on a talent show (for which they build a stage, with no explanation as to where they found the money to do that…).

Willis is a story about perseverance and about making good use of your talents. But mostly, it’s the tale of four mismatched creatures who do a lot of silly things, and Marshall’s desire for kids to “laugh uncontrollably” when they read his books is likely to come to fruition as youngsters peruse the pages.