'After a devastating car crash, Annie is unable to play her flute and retreats from the music she’s always loved. She exists in a world of angry silence – furious with her mum and furious she can’t seem to play her beloved flute any more.
'Then she meets Noah, who shows her the blackbirds’ nest hidden in the scrubland near their flats. As their friendship grows, the blackbirds’ glorious song reignites Annie’s passion for music. But when tragedy strikes again, will her fragile progress be put at risk?'
Birdsong is a new release from Barrington Stoke that takes a look at tragedy. Annie is a young girl with a life that she loves. She plays the flute well, and is getting ready to try out for a specialist music school, and she's got the perfect home with her mother. But everything changes for her when her and her mother are in a car crash. Her mother comes out fine, but Annie injures her hands.
With fingers that don't want to do what she tells them, unable to play her music, and with scars that remind her constantly of what she's lost, her life begins to spiral out of control. Soon, her mother isn't able to keep up with work, and the two of them have to leave their home and move into a small flat in a tower block.
Annie is angry with the way her life has changed. Her plans for the future are gone, her home is lost, and the simple things that used to bring her please, just making music, are denied to her. She's isolated, and spiralling into depression.
When looking out of her window one morning, she sees one of the new neighbourhood kids disappearing into the patch of scrubland nearby. Following after him, Annie discovers that the boy, Noah, is spending time with blackbirds living in the area. Gaining their trust over time, Noah has been caring for the animals as much as he can. Whilst she's at first reluctant to make a new friend, Annie begins to spend more time with Noah and the birds, a decision that will go on to change her life.
Birdsong is a book that doesn't really sugarcoat things. It shows a story where a young girl goes through a terrible event, and comes out of it the worse off. Annie is hurt by the crash, she has lasting physical and emotional scars from it, and they're things that lead to genuine depression. She becomes withdrawn, her relationship with her mother deteriorates, and she begins to find it hard to find any joy in life. The book understands that depression is something that can happen to children, and it never tries to make Annie seem like she's overreacting, or being wrong in the way that she's dealing with her trauma.
Instead, the book takes a different approach, and tells children that it's okay to be sad when bad things happen to them. It takes Annie time to be ready to open up, and it doesn't really happen until she begins to make a new friend. I think the story is trying to tell children that everyone's journey can be a little different, can happen at their own pace, yet still be valid and matter. You might go through something bad, and you might not be ready to move on or open up about it immediately, but that's fine, because you'll get there eventually.
The book also comes with a number of illustrations, provided by Richard Johnson, and I feel like they fit the tone of the book. They're presented in black and white, and mostly focus on Annie and the people immediately around her. Backgrounds are often not included, or mostly minimalist, because Annie is withdrawn into herself. She's the focus of the pictures because she's the focus of her trauma and her story to the point where shes's kind of not caring about what's around her. It's a nice representation of her feelings in the book.
Overall, Birdsong is a really nice story about overcoming pain and trauma, and learning to get better. It's the kind of narrative kids need, so that they know that when they're feeling bad it's not their fault, and it's not going to be forever.
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