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PICTURE BOOKS
Böge, Dieter

189 Canaries

48 pp. | Eerdmans | September, 2021 | Trade ISBN 978-0-8028-5574-9 $17.99
(2) K-3 Translated by Laura Watkinson. Illustrated by Elsa Klever. "This is the story of a long journey, but I'll keep it as short as I can because it has such a lovely ending." This fascinating, very beautiful picture book describes the journey, in the nineteenth century, of one canary, part of a group of 189, transported by a bird trader via foot, train, and steamship from the silver mines of the Harz Mountains in Germany to New York, where it is purchased as a pet. The storytelling style uses the present tense to pull the reader directly into a faraway time and place. Böge's narration is full of sensory details ("With every step, the rack sways left, then right. The cages rub against each other, and the thin wooden bars creak quietly") that are particularly appropriate for a story about a bird prized for its voice. Klever's mixed-media illustrations, with a muted color palette, have the flat perspective of folk art. The canary is the brightest object on most pages, and Klever expresses the richness of its song with imagery of the things whose sounds influence it, including trees, wind, rain, waves, trains, and other animals. An extensive, highly illustrated afterword includes a history of canaries and their use in mining and as pets.
Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2021

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