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| The Love Song of Mr. Byrd by Philippa Dowding Illustration: FRIEND © Caroline Clarke 2025 |
The Love Song of Mr. Byrd is now available! This is my 15th book for children, and my first chapter book for ages 6-9 (it's also a great all-ages read-aloud). It's a short, lyrical ballad to love and friendship between unlikely friends. It's also sweetly illustrated by Newfoundland artist Caroline Clarke.
You can order a copy of Mr. Byrd now. Thank you to my publisher, DCB Young Readers!
Enjoy Caroline's illustration above and a taste of chapter two, Friend, as Mr. Byrd experiences a wobbly start to his new friendship with Bat:
"Mr. Byrd came to the branch of the red maple tree the next night. He’d been looking for worms all day with little success. July was dry, and the worms were hidden deep in the cracked earth.
He looked over the fields.
“I wonder. I wonder if she’ll be back?”
The tree was at the end of the street, near a brick house that belonged to a large family. Children’s bicycles, soccer balls, and baseball gloves lay everywhere in the grass.
The sun was golden and low in the sky. It was almost twilight.
I’m sure she’s not coming, he thought a bit later, as he watched the sun sink lower. Then he puffed out his chest and looked down at himself.
He didn’t even feel like singing, which was what he usually did at the end of the day.
He settled his feathers. The sun was sinking, but there was no Bat.
“Look at me. Why would any bat want to be my friend? It was silly of me to think that she would come. Who ever heard of a bat and a bird being friends?”
The more he thought about it, the more foolish he felt. He was nobody. Well, not nobody maybe, but really just a very small somebody in a very big world filled with creatures far more interesting and important than he was.
He was just Byrd, or even Mr. Byrd, according to Bat. But he wasn’t flashy ..." Text © Philippa Dowding 2025
Spoiler alert: Bat shows up! The friendship blossoms all summer until fall brings change, and for Mr. Byrd, the sweetest song of all.
Readers may discover a gentle resonance with classics like The Wind in the Willows, Charlotte's Web, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Tao of Pooh, all the Franklin the Turtle books, and more of those books that you wish someone had read to you as a child. ENJOY!
More about The Love Song of Mr. Byrd on this blog.
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