Another won­der­ful book by Jeremy Tankard.  I love this Bird.  On this day in Bird’s life he is play­ing catch with Rac­coon and acci­den­tally gets bonked on the head with the ball.  Even though it was an acci­dent, much drama ensues.  Rac­coon takes him to each one of his friends to try and get him to feel bet­ter but noth­ing works.   Not a kiss from Rac­coon:(my daugh­ters favorite illus­tra­tion… she laughs and points it out to me every sin­gle time), or a hug from Rab­bit, or a cookie from Beaver, a game from Sheep or a bandaid from Fox will do the trick.  Bird’s friends are sad because they can’t seem to help Bird feel bet­ter.  When Bird sees that his friends are now sad he real­izes that he’s over it.  Unfor­tu­nately no one can hear him because now THEY are cry­ing.  Bird finally stands on his head to show them he is all­right and his friends stand on their heads too.  After that Bird says “let’s play catch”.  There is a lit­tle twist at the end that’s very funny.  What I love about this book is that although the illus­tra­tions and char­ac­ters are whim­si­cal, the sit­u­a­tions and the way the char­ac­ters inter­act are all too real.  Chil­dren and adults will be able to see them­selves in this story and it never hurts to be reminded that if we let our­selves get too wrapped up in the drama, we will fail to see the truth star­ing us in the face.

I love this book.  The illus­tra­tions are col­or­ful and imag­i­na­tive.  The prose has a won­der­ful mes­sage about friend­ship.  In a nut­shell, Bird wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, or nest I sup­pose.  He is so grumpy that he’s “too grumpy to fly”.  So he walks.  As he is walk­ing he runs into his friends and one by one they join him on his walk.  He tries to ignore them but their joy is catch­ing and by the end he has for­got­ten all about being grumpy.  This book is so much fun to read for me and the ill­stra­tions never fail to crack my daugh­ter up.