THE BOY WHO DREW BIRDS, A Story of John James Audubon
By Jacqueline Davies
Illustrated by Melissa Sweet
Category: Picture book biography
I am off to write for the weekend! I will soon be checked into a room of my own at an inn full of writers with my laptop, my favorite work-in-progress, and my most comfortable winter-weather-snuggle-in-to-work clothes. I’ve packed tea for the mornings, a bottle of champagne for a special evening (my writing partners and I are celebrating book releases this year), and some books to read for inspiration. I cannot think of a better way to spend three January days in New England.
What does all this have to do with THE BOY WHO DREW BIRDS? Well, the Rising River Retreat is run by the book’s author, Jacqueline Davies. I’m bringing my copy for her to sign, and I couldn’t help but re-read it before I tucked it into my suitcase.
THE BOY WHO DREW BIRDS is not a birth-to-death telling of Audubon’s life, but a glimpse at one special and formative year. During that year, young John James is intent on solving a centuries-old mystery: where do small birds spend the winter. The answers posed by scientists of the day ranged from outrageous (one scientist actually believed the birds flew to the moon!) to curious (another suggested small birds hibernated underwater for the winter). John James suspected small birds migrated, just as larger birds were known to do, and he took to observing and drawing the small birds nesting near his home in an attempt to better understand them. As the time for migration neared, John James had a marvelous idea, an idea that would help him partly solve the mystery of bird migration and which would lead, eventually, to a revolutionary technique for monitoring the movement of birds.
More about the retreat, and the author of THE BOY WHO DREW BIRDS, next week …