A Bird Is a Bird

I have to admit that this book had me at the cover, which features one of my favorite birds, the Black-necked Stilt. Okay, I admit, I have a lot of favorite birds and many of them are included in A Bird Is a Bird.

Lizzy Rockwell uses short, poetic lines of text and simple, yet realistic,
illustrations to explain how birds are distinguished from other animals and the many ways we can categorize birds, juxtaposing different species to make her point. A bird can be tall or short, fancy or plain. They use their beaks to consume different types of foods. Despite any differences, a bird is a bird because it starts out as an egg and they have feathers.

The text is simple enough for a beginning reader to read alone and the story ends with a little girl watching a Rock Pigeon from her window. I appreciate that the book concludes with a child enjoying a very common, and frequently maligned, bird. These common birds, more so than my beloved Roseate Spoonbill or the elusive Eastern Screech Owl are what most kids will easily see at home and that will get them started as birdwatchers. Most of the examples are birds that children would find somewhere in the United States, although the Toco Toucan might be in an aviary and the penguin only in an aquarium, allowing the book to act as a sort of checklist for observations.


For classrooms or extended reading time, pair this book with An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Hutts Aston, which looks at one feature of a bird (the egg) and how many other animals also start out as eggs. Other thematic options for paired reading are two of Rockwell's earlier books, A Nest Full of Eggs, written by Pricilla Betz Jenkins, or Our Yard is Full of Birds, written by her mother, Anne Rockwell.