Birdsongs take wing as poems

Today at the Bluebird Café: A Branchful of Birds
Written by Deborah Ruddell; Illustrated by Joan Rankin
McElderry Books

Reviewed by Ilene Goldman

From the frontispiece, this book made me smile. Rankin’s whimsical illustrations of laughing children swung by trapeze ropes held by birds foreshadows the imagination and lyricism captured in Ruddell’s poems. Each poem in this collection tells us something about the bird for which it is named. 

“The Loon’s Laugh” focuses on the loon’s unique song while “The Cardinal” finds more “red” words than I can think of quickly.  “The Woodpecker” asks us to put ourselves in his shoes: “If you think that his life is a picnic, / a seesawing day at the park, / I ask you just once to consider/ the aftertaste / of bark.

I’ve tried to pick a favorite poem in this collection, but I just can’t.  How can you choose between a vulture who lectures on table manners and “Blue Jay Blues,” which begins with this startling description: “Blue as a bruise on a swollen knee”?

Beyond the striking juxtaposition of words to elicit movement, sounds, and colors, the strength of these poems lies in the variation of rhythm and meter from poem to poem.  Trilling rhymes echo the loon’s laugh, “No tweedle-dee-dee on your windowsill. / No sunshiny tune from the top of a hill. / No chirp. No coo. No warble or cheep. / No bubbly twitter or sweet little peep.” 

Loftier, gentler rhymes fly with the Eagle: “She rides like she owns the sun, on a sea of air and light— / surfing, skimming, rising high, / then sweeping low and tight.”

Ruddell’s poems are complemented by Rankin’s lovely watercolor paintings, at once whimsical and realistic.  She illustrates the stories told by the poems, adding fancy to flight, if you’ll forgive the backwards pun.

I end with a confession and an aspiration. The confession: I recently had the opportunity to hear Deborah Ruddell and her editor Karen Wojtyla speak about the publication of Today at the Bluebird Café. I was particularly interested to read a book whose editor declared publicly that she’d done very little editing because Ruddell’s poetry was already precise. I was not disappointed.

The aspiration: Ruddell spoke of being “old” for a first children’s book.  I can only aspire to debut, at any age, with such a delightful book.

Rating: *\*\*\*\ 

Comments

Thanks for the great review, Anne!
Deborah Ruddell

[Anne]

Actually, it was Ilene Goldman who wrote the review. I also got a lot out of your presentation at Prairie Writers' Day. Thanks again.