'When Noah’s dad visits from New York, he and Noah come across an injured nightjar during a walk in the countryside. Noah is determined to save the bird, but his dad believes they should leave it alone to let nature take its course. As father and son argue, it becomes clear that Noah is angry about more than just the bird. He feels abandoned and misunderstood by his dad, who has moved to the US and started a new family there that doesn’t seem to have room for Noah. Can they find a way to build a new relationship and rediscover the common ground between them?'
When I was a younger reader there seemed to be two types of lead characters in books, the confident, almost brash boys who were always up for adventure, and the girly girls who were the sensitive souls of the world. Obviously, this wasn't a hard and fast rule, and there were books that did things different, but a lot of the stories I was given when a kid were split this way, reinforcing rigid gender roles and stereotypes. One of the things that I love about Barrington Stoke's books is that they don't do this, and more often than not, end up going against the grain somewhat. Nightjar does this, and does it wonderfully, as it delivers a story about a kind, caring, and sensitive young boy.
Nightjar tells the story of Noah, a twelve year old boy living in London with his mother. Noah's father left a number of years ago, and has made a new life for himself in New York, along with a girlfriend and her kid. But, this doesn't bother Noah too much, as he's forged a good life for himself, with his best friend, his mother, and his passion for birds. Noah loves watching birds, and his room is covered in his drawings of birds that he's seen. But more than that, he also likes helping birds, finding sick and injured birds and nursing them back to health to be released into the wild.
Noah's carefully constructed life is thrown slightly off-kilter when his father arrives in the city for a week in order to spend some time with Noah leading up to his Bat Mitzvah. The two of them struggle to really fins common ground, and their relationship becomes strained. However, when the two of them come across an injured nightjar when out on a walk, and Noah insists on helping the bird, their relationship might just get pushed to breaking point.
I really liked Noah as a protagonist. He's not your typical thirteen year old boy. He's quiet, has a love and passion for nature, a deeply caring side, and enjoys his own company a lot of the time. He's not the kind of protagonists I was used to seeing when I was growing up reading, but he's the kind of protagonists I'd have loved to have seen. His passion and his caring side are wonderful qualities, and it makes him into a boy willing to stand up for what he believes is right.
As someone who enjoys nature, and adores animals, I loved seeing that kind of passion in Noah. I'm the kind of person who would put myself out to try and help a sick and injured animal, and my own pets have cost me many of thousands in vet bills over the years, so I absolutely understand the drive to help that's at the heart of Noah's story here.
But the book isn't just about his love of birds, as it also deals with his relationship with his father. Noah and his father don't really get on very well; not because they don't like each other, but because they don't really understand each other, and don't know how to communicate well. This is something that I think a lot of readers will understand, and something that a lot of people are trying to correct for the next generation. Parents are trying harder to fix those old stereotypes of the detached father who doesn't know how to connect with his kids, and I've seen a lot better parents in my peers; but not every family is going to be like that, and kids can still feel isolated from a parent, especially if they're separated.
Over the course of the book there are a few times where we see the relationship between Noah and his father going back and forth in a kind of tug of war as the two of them try to figure out how to be around each other. And whilst it would be easy to have the mostly absent father be the villain of the piece, to be unwilling to change or grow over the course of the book, Balen makes Noah somewhat at fault too. Noah sticks to his guns, refuses to shift his position or think about the point his father is making because he feels like his is the only right way; and Noah has to learn that that's not the way the world works, and that he's going to have to grow as a person.
Despite not being in the book as much, Noah's mother also plays an important role, and is a big figure in his life. Noah's mother is something of the neutral party between the two of them. She understands the kind of person Noah is, she loves his passions and encourages him, but she's also there to help him see that maybe he's not always as right as he thinks he is. She has a sense of serenity and calm to her that's very much needed in the book. She's also clearly a very creative and caring person too. Not only does she nurture Noah's connection to his Jewish heritage, spending time preparing him for his Bat Mitzvah and cooking Jewish food, but she also helps other too, with her business being carefully crafting funerary dresses for babies. There's a wonderful passage in the book, after she gives Noah is Bat Mitzvah suit that describes her beautifully, 'My mum can stitch life together and death and heartbreak and hope and beauty and the past and the future. She is brilliant.'.
The book also contains a number of illustrations, provided by Richard Johnson. These are often used at key moments in the narrative, such as Noah finding the nightjar, of him nursing it back to health, his big blow-up with his dad, the emotional ending; these moments are important parts of the book, and the illustrations help with their impact. It helps the younger readers to get into these moments more, to visualise them, and I think that these scenes, accompanied by these illustrations, will be the moments that stick out in young readers minds. The fact that they're beautifully done as well only helps with this impact.
Nightjar is a delightful read, one that feels like it has a lot of heart to it, that isn't afraid to show a teen boy as sensitive, caring, and kind, yet also flawed. It explores both strained parental relationships, and strong, well connected ones. It gives insight into the life of a wonderful young boy who is clearly going to go on to become an amazing man; and it just leaves the reader with this fantastic sense of hope and goodness.
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