2025 Eisner award for Best Webcomic: Life After Life, from Joshua Barkman's False Knees work. I have been reading some of False Knees, which involves 2025 Eisner award for Best Webcomic: Life After Life, from Joshua Barkman's False Knees work. I have been reading some of False Knees, which involves close observations of animal behavior. Life After Life is a post-apocalyptic comic focused on some chickadees just trying to get some peanuts--during the apocalypse. So subtle, heartfelt, sad, and an indication of what life be like after humans eliminate themselves. But this isn't a zombie apocalypse story; no blood and guts; no real blatant social commentray (like I am doing here). its just three sweet chickadees doing their thing, doing what they do, which somehow makes it all the more poignant. ...more
Matthew Cordell is the acclaimed author and illustrator of the 2018 Caldecott winner Wolf in the Snow, which I really liked. And as a birder, and alsoMatthew Cordell is the acclaimed author and illustrator of the 2018 Caldecott winner Wolf in the Snow, which I really liked. And as a birder, and also seeker of owls (hard to do in the Chicago area, at least for me), I appreciated the patience the main character has for finding an owl. But she does a lot of preparation and research for it, with the help of her birder teacher. The story is good; the illustrations, as with Wolf, are very good, and the birding connection bumps up my rating a tad.
PS, note to self: Cordell dedicates the book to his friend in books and birds, Junko Yokota, a Chicagoan with an international rep as champion of children's books.https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit...#...more
I picked thus up this morning at the library because I liked illustrator Matt James's cover and because it is yet again a book that has me in this sorI picked thus up this morning at the library because I liked illustrator Matt James's cover and because it is yet again a book that has me in this sorta random rabbit hole, or rather owl hole. I love the title. And it is about drawing owls, but in the book we find out how it is Belle knows how to draw owls so well: She's homeless, living out of a car with her mom, in the woods, near an owl she visits each night.
And she won't tell the class why it is she can draw them so well, but because she has become so vulnerable by her situation, she realizes it is she that has to welcome the frightened new kid to class. There is some myth about the homeless/refugees/immigrants that they are generally criminals. Some folks fear them, but I think it may be that some folks fear they may become them. There's a kind of shaming and blaming that is shameful, I think. This book can help introduce kids to the concept of economic instability and poverty and homelessness in general.
I have been teaching for many decades, middle, high school, college, university, grad school, and at every level there have been homeless students. The threat of deportation of millions based on some myth of crime rates will not help. But teaching empathy in schools and religious institutions and homes may help....more
I know the inverse of an old joke: I just read this for the pictures, and it is true I got this from the library to see all the cool owls, but I have I know the inverse of an old joke: I just read this for the pictures, and it is true I got this from the library to see all the cool owls, but I have been on a bit of a birding kick the last couple years and this last month went on an owl walk in the dark and heard screech owls (I've seen them, but somehow this group night walk made the hearing of them exciting) so I don't ONLY want to look at pretty pictures. I go a stake in owl lore here. I also read a great book on the Fish Owls of the far northern ice regions of Russia. Read owl poems by Mary Oliver. I'm legit!
So yeah, I actually read this book--okay, it's a coffee table-sized book, and I'll confess I didn't read every word, but I learned a few things, and have actually driven to see a couple owls in my area that came up in my social media feeds. Such strange and wonderful creatures!
But here's a thing: Interest in exotic birds can sometimes not be good for the birds. This poast week in the Chicago area we had a fairly rare sighting of a Great Snowy Owl, dozens of cars went to see it, the owl freaked out, flew, and was hit by a car. This is horrible. So respect the distance, keep them safe! Why is it we have to remind ourselves every week of the year that wild animals must have the freedom to be wild? Even on my recent owl walk our guide told us he only does the walks a couple times a year; worried it threatens the owls too much. And we were whispering and staying many yards from where we heard them. ...more
Imagine: 1) I am slow reading Owls and Other Fantasies by Mary Oliver; 2) I went on an (age-appropriate oldster, but with a "boy genius"--everyone seeImagine: 1) I am slow reading Owls and Other Fantasies by Mary Oliver; 2) I went on an (age-appropriate oldster, but with a "boy genius"--everyone seems to call him that--leader) owl walk with a birding group the other night (and we heard three screech owls; and were told that six different kinds of owls had been sighted in this area, so we sort of "geeked" [youngster word] at the outset), and 3) I heard this book was shortlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Non-Fiction. Not surprisingly, given the obscure subject matter, there was no waiting list whatsoever to my downloading the audiobook version. Which makes me all the more committed to writing this review.
Oh, I really, really like this book, read by the nerdy adventurer/scholar Slaght, an academic writing a very accessible sort of environmental thriller, a story of his traveling to where some of the few Fish Owls--the largest owls, and least known--live, in order to try to argue with the world to save their habitats, if at all possible. The Eastern Ice he refers to in the title is in the Primoriye region of Eastern Russia, close to Japan, and North Korea. Way far north, in a very hard to get to area, where the remaining owls he studied still live.
So Slaght wrote his MA thesis and dissertation at the University of Minnesota about this work, about The Blakiston's Fish Owl, the largest species of owl on earth--this data collection--over the space of several years. Not for you, a scientific study? Think again. Slaght describes some of the work as a sometimes dangerous series of adventures involving a lot of crazy characters--mystics, hermits-- mingled with seriously committed researchers, dangerous weather, and a lot of vodka. And in the way of any research, much frustration, much disappointment, and outright failure.
But the first hearing of the owls--the owls sometimes sing in duets!--and the first sightings(wow!), and the first capture for marking and and further close study--are narrated with such downright excitement that you get why traveling this far to just see these birds could be thrilling. And important, not just some obscure venture such as you might find in a Werner Herzog film (such as Grizzly Man, a documentary). If you think that saving an owl is a snooze fest, Slaght will convince you that this work, one small part of our--all of our--larger work to live in harmony with the planet, is important for not only the owls, but for us.
Yes, I read The Sixth Extinction, I know it is terrifying what is happening to species every day as climate change catastrophe and habitat disappearance descends on us, but this is just one story of good news that can inspire us to fight in our own areas for what's left for the creatures we share the planet we need to coexist with.
Here's a one minute video promo to the book, and the project:
“Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
“How important it is to walk along, not in hast“Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
“How important it is to walk along, not in haste, but slowly, looking at everything and calling out.”
“The light of the body is the eye.”
Mary Oliver collects some of her bird poems in this book. Here she observes an owl pounce on a mouse in a flurry of snow, and reflects, “Maybe death/isn’t darkness after all,/ but so much light/ wrapping itself around us--as soft as feathers. . . scalding, aortal light--in which we are washed and washed/out of our bones.”
Wild Geese Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clear blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-- over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Snowy Night Mary Oliver
Last night, an owl in the blue dark tossed an indeterminate number of carefully shaped sounds into the world, in which, a quarter of a mile away, I happened to be standing. I couldn’t tell which one it was – the barred or the great-horned ship of the air – it was that distant. But, anyway, aren’t there moments that are better than knowing something, and sweeter? Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness. I suppose if this were someone else’s story they would have insisted on knowing whatever is knowable – would have hurried over the fields to name it – the owl, I mean. But it’s mine, this poem of the night, and I just stood there, listening and holding out my hands to the soft glitter falling through the air. I love this world, but not for its answers. And I wish good luck to the owl, whatever its name – and I wish great welcome to the snow, whatever its severe and comfortless and beautiful meaning.
How different and simpler the lives of birds compared to humans, though not without danger, terror, death, of course. But also contentment, joy, communion. I still run and take brisk walks, but I am learning--trying to learn--to slow down, watch and listen as a meditative practice and principle for living.
The Marginalian review and meditation on this book by Mary Popova:
I believe of all Amy Tan's work that I had until now only read her The Joy Luck Club when it came out, and saw the film the next year. But I've becomeI believe of all Amy Tan's work that I had until now only read her The Joy Luck Club when it came out, and saw the film the next year. But I've become a kind of (lame) birder, on (the bird app) Merlin when I take hikes, I've always read books on nature/the environment, and have recently read several books on birds. This fam kept a back yard bird journal from the year the kids were born, pasting in pics of birds, occasionally making sketches, writing down observed and researched details. We continue our (bird species count) "life" lists on our phones. We joined a local birder group, went on an owl walk in the dark recently, and so on.
So it was obvious we would read this book! It features a preface by birder rock star David Sibley, a beautifully written, completely captivating introduction by the author, and her own beautifully drawn and painted birds--she took classes to learn how to draw birds better and better and she gets an A from me for her work. Wonderful for the bird pics alone! The main content is excerpts from her many birding/nature journals, elaborated on facing pages with more of her warmly inviting prose. We also get a list of birds she has seen in her own back yard and it is a stunning array--I want a tour of this place! I want a documentary on this book, at least, featuring her back yard!
The combination of the writing and drawing is terrific. What's the point of drawing birds? As she says, you don't understand birds until you draw them. Or: to truly see them you have to pay attention, and the drawing helps. This is a book about the importance of slowing down and really seeing birds, or the natural world, which is an important part of supporting the environment. If you are a birder, this is a must read....more
A sweet and pretty straightforward wordless picture book by Rina Singh and digitally illusrated by Nathalie Dion. A solo bird comes into a city looki A sweet and pretty straightforward wordless picture book by Rina Singh and digitally illusrated by Nathalie Dion. A solo bird comes into a city looking to make a nest and chooses a tree near an apartment building. Each inhabitant becomes intrigued and then very interested in the bird. I think this is a nudge for us to all make connections with the natural world, and birds in particular. Later in thebook we see other birds flying in, so it's not just one bird, finally, it's a whole flock, a whole natural world. Sweet and simple.
PS: Apropos of nothing, I was reminded of Hitchcock's Rear Windowm where the Jimmy Stewart character snoops on his neighbors, seeing into each apartment. This is kind of an inversion--not the human world, but the natureal world--become a birder!--and here the people in the apartment look at the bird. I know, it has nothing to do with this book, but take it as a positive spin on Hitchcock's (Cornell Woolrich's) voyeur/murder thriller. Once, a Bird is, let's say, quieter? ...more
Grandpa and the Kingfisher is author Anna Wilson’s sweet and gentle tribute to her father, whose favorite bird was the kingfisher. In this fictional pGrandpa and the Kingfisher is author Anna Wilson’s sweet and gentle tribute to her father, whose favorite bird was the kingfisher. In this fictional picture book story, Grandpa teaches his grandkid about the cycle of life through their observations of the kingfishers, and the food chain, mayflies, dragonflies, mating, raising chicks, and death, even as grandpa gets older and frailer. So it’s honest about life and death, following grandpa’s observation that nobody lives forever, as the kingfishers disappear.
I had just been researching kingfishers as I saw one the other day at a bird sanctuary, so I went back to my source to confirm that they live longer than Wilson implies (then see other reviewers also mention this in their reviews). The death of grandpa is, like the kingfishers, a sudden, abrupt, and unexplained disappearance, which will be confusing without an adult reader to explain it (you can download an audio version from the provided QR code, but I’d still suggest reading it aloud to a child).
But the idea of nature going on forever is positive, even if it is also true that we are losing species every day. But the point is to learn about and live in harmony with the natural world. I liked Sarah Massini’s illustrations a lot, especially the closely detailed and dramatic scenes of the kingfisher diving for fish. ...more
Just a note to self. In my experience families go through these obsessions--ping pong tournaments, chess, particular sports, and so on, and this is trJust a note to self. In my experience families go through these obsessions--ping pong tournaments, chess, particular sports, and so on, and this is true for mine, too. We all got into somewhat more serious birding lately, though the Cornell Bird App, and so suddenly all these bird books like this show up strewn around the house. This one is cool. I would have liked it at 7 or 17 or (now) 70, as the pics the team chose for all the weird birds are fantastic. Extraordinary and bizarre, yep.
It's one of those Guinness Book of World Records books, in a way: Longest Legs, Widest Wingspan, Smelliest, Longest penis (true! Lake Duck in South America, cuz you wanted to know, admit it), biggest, smallest, most voracious appetite, produces the most eggs, and so on. ...more
Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet is nice, almost a kind of allegory of goodness in the face of tragedy. However, I had the feeling that Millet fell in love wDinosaurs by Lydia Millet is nice, almost a kind of allegory of goodness in the face of tragedy. However, I had the feeling that Millet fell in love with her Good main character Gil in the process of her writing this He’s almost totally good throughout. He’s the heir to oil and gas riches when his exec parents both die in a car crash when he’s a kid. He meets a woman at 18 who after many years dumps him: “I met someone,” is all she has to say to him; she married Gil for his money, and Gil was naive to think it had been love.
Gil’s a kind of loner, who instead of doing paid work, possibly redeems the damage his parents and their generation has done to the planet by volunteering to Do Good everywhere. And love birds, going extinct at a rapid rate due to climate change.. But when he is dumped he leaves Manhattan, buys a house in Tucson (increasingly hot Arizona being a kind of site for considering climate change, I think), and connects with a family there. He faces down bullies and bird-killers. There’s a lot of time spent in the book about infidelity and the rising divorce rate, and the struggle to commitment as yet another indication of moral decline.
I was reminded when I read it of the feel of moral allegory in John Steinbeck’s Winter of Our Discontent, where a lost guy finds his way. Gil is kinda too perfect but Millet’s book about the present day in Arizona, with all the hate and separation as climate destruction ensues, feels like her winter of discontent book. The point of the dinosaurs re: humans I don’t think I have to underscore. The connection of the extinction of birds to the survival of the planet is just for her that we have to take care of each other--humans have to work against bird and animal extinction as part of working against human extinction. We have to connect with each other, be kinder. Not a complex book, but life-affirming:
“. . . separateness had always been the illusion . . . the world was inside you.”...more
Since I was traveling to northern Wisconsin to stay for the weekend on a small lake (with loons), I picked this up just as I was leaving the library, and it did not disappoint. Sweet story, educational book for young'uns, lovely illustrations, kind of a throw-back style, delicate lines....more
I am a huge fan of Flannery O'Connor, one of the very best short story writers of all time. She was devoutly Roman Catholic, which she connected to thI am a huge fan of Flannery O'Connor, one of the very best short story writers of all time. She was devoutly Roman Catholic, which she connected to the southern grotesque literary tradition. Some people who have no religious background find her stories bizarrely Christian, which they are! But to me --one raised in a strict religious (Dutch Protestant) environment, they are not only not off-puttingly strange, but strangely thrilling. Many of her stories also feature birds--ducks, guinea hens, though particularly chickens and peacocks.
Last year I found a book of cartoons O'Connor had done throughout her short life (she died of Lupus at 39), and in this book we learn more about her drawing at an early age birds of all kinds. She especially loved peacocks and raised them on her family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia.
She "knew that the peacock had been the bird of Hera, the wife of Zeus, but since that time it had probably come down in the world.”
“Whut is that thang?” one of the boys asked. “Churren,” the old man said, “that’s the king of the birds!”
The priest calls the peacock a “beauti-ful” bird with a “tail full of suns."
In "The Displaced Person" O’Connor underscores a woman’s blindness to the bird by describing how the peacock “jumped into the tree and his tail hung in front of her, full of fierce planets with eyes that were each ringed in green and set against a sun. . . She might have been looking at a map of the universe but she didn’t notice it any more than she did the. . . sky." O'Connor thought that the second coming of Christ would be like the peacock in full glory.
Mathematician Amy Alznauer wrote the story here, which I especially love when she quotes O'Connor:
When her beloved Dad died of Lupus, she wrote, "death wakes you up, like a wound in the side" (--that bizarre way grief can lead to wonder).
But the illustration from Ping Zhu--her first book???!!--is just wonderful. The book is said to be for children 4-8, but it is clearly all ages, because no child that age would read her stories or know about her.
It's spring! Time to look for birds. And this is a good and lovely introduction written by Jennifer Ward and illustrated beautifully by Diana Sudyka tIt's spring! Time to look for birds. And this is a good and lovely introduction written by Jennifer Ward and illustrated beautifully by Diana Sudyka to birding (maybe primarily) for kids, featuring more than 50 illustrations of birds, and some simple advice: How to find birds? Look up, or down, look closely at where birds blend in with natural foliage. Close your eyes and listen. Move slowly,. be quiet. Feed them. Maybe they will find you.
Two weekends ago I spent time in a cabin near a lake, with family, a camera, binoculars, 5 hours south of where I live, looking for animals and birds in the woods.
Last week I walked with one son as I have for many ears through the Montrose Beach bird sanctuary on Lake Michigan.
Yesterday I stopped short less than thirty feet from a hawk on the edge of a pond.
I saw this book as sixth place in the 2019 Goodreads Choice Award humor category so thought I would order it from the library. I thought the title wasI saw this book as sixth place in the 2019 Goodreads Choice Award humor category so thought I would order it from the library. I thought the title was pretty funny, and I thought the juvenile humor might just appeal to some of the actual juveniles in this house, but I didn't share it with them because the main comedic strategy is to use Marine-level swearing (cf, that picture book for adults, Go the F... to Sleep) such as replacing Red-Breasted Sapsucker with Red-breasted Shitsucker, and so on. The juvenile humor is mildly funny, I guess: Belted King-Pisser instead of Kingfisher, or Dumb Western Bluebird instead of Western Bluebird, so the point of the joke is to make the author actually appear dumb. Self-parody.
"He draws pretty well for being so dumb! Matt Kracht? Nope, Matt Crocked, haw haw haw haw haw! Put that in your nest and suck an egg, Matt Crap!"--From the boid Crap calls Red-winged Butt-Wad! "Pretty funny, Not! That's Red-Winged Blackbird to you, wise guy! Don't give up your day job!"...more
For Birds' Sake is a collaboration between Cemre Yesil and Maria Sturm and is dedicated to the Birdme“I know why the caged bird sings”-- Maya Angelou.
For Birds' Sake is a collaboration between Cemre Yesil and Maria Sturm and is dedicated to the Birdmen of Istanbul. I can’t quite elevate my status to birder, but I do go every week or so to the Montrose Beach Bird Sanctuary on Lake Michigan with my son S, who loves to walk there, and another son, H, who just may become a birder. We feed birds in our back yard, and keep a “bird book” documenting all the birds that we see coming into the yard. And sometimes we photograph them if we can, some of them gold and purple finches, a rare woodpecker or kestrel, but this is a large urban area, and I have a small back yard, so the extent of my birding is pretty limited, really. And I knew nothing about these birdmen, but I got this book as a gift recently. Then discovered several complicating aspects of their work. I’ll explain.
Here’s a website where you can see the men, some aspects of their work, but you don’t actually see the birds. The bird(men) and the photographers (women) listen to the birds, mainly!
The photography work here is documentation of a dying practice in Istanbul, the breeding and care of particular birds, in this case local finch varieties, the men, mostly older, carrying the birds everywhere in shrouded white cages, the confinement increasing, they claim, the beauty of the birds' singing. In the book you mainly have the photographs, for which I am grateful, but the above website tells you a bit more about the birdmen.
The truly baffling aspect of this practice is the darkness, keeping the birds in the dark. It’s an illegal practice, actually, with some hint of cruelty to it, many people say, so there are people who are trying to free the birds, driving the practice underground. The men otherwise seem to lovingly feed and care for their birds, they say the covered boxes protect the fragile birds from the world, and then, they also participate in singing “contests.” Much of the practice seems isolated, but there is a social dimension.
For these men—and they are all men—keeping birds and listening to their singing is a sort of addiction that they think they cannot live without. As one man says, “I won't go out with my wife, it's my bird I want to be seen with,” one of them says, before turning to the cage, his words quickly fading into a beautiful whistled language that only his winged pet will understand.
This is photography as cultural anthropology, an interesting project that leaves me with more questions than answers. A cool and weird book, but you don't get much of a sense of the cultural practice from just looking at the photographs, thus the 3 stars for the book from me.
The Birdman of Alcatraz trailer, with Burt Lancaster as Robert Stroud, a film based on the story of a lifer who taught himself the science of ornithology, though he was in solitary confinement for an incredible 43 years:
You look like a monster, one woman said to another. The woman was on fire. This is the first of two screws twisted into a wall. OnFirst Thing Tyler Mills
You look like a monster, one woman said to another. The woman was on fire. This is the first of two screws twisted into a wall. One bus is sent on its route minutes before the other. This is the first. Thousands of soldiers were lowering their faces to the grass, as though an exercise can will an effect. People made their way to the hospital: a doctor would look at them, and then they could die. You can dip a line of monofilament into a river. You can do it twice. The first becomes a second. The second becomes a third. Three girls stretched out their arms while the wind sheared their flesh. Sheared, not seared, what was left. I could have shown you a swimming pool lit with turquoise light. It was early. It was a mission. It wasn’t the first.
Hawk Parable is a book of poetry by Tyler Mills, whose first book was the also wonderful Tongue Lyre. As of today, it is my favorite book so far this year. Among many other related issues, it is about the ever present capacity for human beings to engage in their own devastation through nuclear and atomic warfare. Mills’s own grandfather was a WWII fighter pilot and may have been involved in testing/bombing, so this was part of the impetus for the book. She doesn’t know for sure, but this very “not knowing” is one of the mysteries she investigates.
Another, related subject is how we can best represent our memories, history, experience, as each year the experience is another year older and dimmer, faded into the distance, getting somewhat obscure. But now that you know that the poem above is about Nagasaki, see if it doesn’t make a bit more sense; but not completely comprehensible, right? To even suggest something so horrific could be clearly narrated is almost an ethical issue.
What’s the relationship between memory and imagination? Of secret history and our capacity for evil? What is the best way to “capture” something beyond our ability to put something in words? Is poetry after the Holocaust or Hiroshima even possible, as Adorno asked? “We don’t have imagery,” Mills says at one point. Or why is it the imagery we use often falls short? Why, for instance, do we call it a “mushroom cloud”? Why was the first bomb dropped on Hiroshima called Little Boy? How is this an unacceptable softening of the horror? How many children alone were incinerated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (Answer: It is impossible to fix exact figures, but experts insist that a quarter million is a conservative number).
“Two sheets of archival paper, one for truth, the other, lie.”
Shakespeare liked the sonnet for the subject of love. What is the best form for war, for nuclear murder, for unspeakable suffering? Let me count some of the ways Mills uses to try to get at some of these horrific mysteries: lyric, narrative, found, “experimental,” (which tend to be more fragmented, pastiche; I think of Paul Celan’s fragmented poetry after the Holocaust, compared to his more conventional work before the war(. Mills' sources included faded photographs, her grandfather’s writing, her dreams, declassified government files, John Hershey’s Hiroshima, the testimonies of survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Some repeated images/themes: Flight (birds, planes); (nature, technology); the fragility of the body; shadows/the sun as illumination/blinding; our individual/collective responsibility for mass murder.
Mills lives and teaches now in New Mexico, near enough to Los Alamos, where so much testing took place. She’s researched the extensive testing there, and also on Bikini Atoll, and other isolated, "hidden" or not quite secret places where nuclear testing has taken place. History fades into the shadows; how do we remember what we don’t fully comprehend? Underground testing; nuclear waste buried in the ground, out of sight, out of mind. Some of these poems are “clear” and personal and some of it is dream-infused, dream-like, disoriented. Some of it is searingly direct, and some of it is difficult, complex. Trying to find the words where there are no words. Brave, terrifying. But make no mistake about it: This is gorgeous, humane, important work, absolutely astonishing work.
One small and "simple" “found” poem taken from actual survivor testimony:
The Baby
I was hanging the baby’s diapers on the balcony When I noticed A multicolored parachute Floating in the sky.
Another survivor writes: “It is impossible for me to write anymore. Forgive me.”
Four more of the poems from this collection can be found here:
Here is an essay that can be found at the Poetry Foundation site about her research into nuclear testing/detonation/devastation that explains the Punch Cards work:
Jérémie Royer discovered the work of famed ornithological illustrator John James (or Jean Jacques) Audubon and contacted author Fabien Grolleau about Jérémie Royer discovered the work of famed ornithological illustrator John James (or Jean Jacques) Audubon and contacted author Fabien Grolleau about collaborating on an illustrated biography of Audubon, who after failing in various kinds of conventional business pursuits, obsessively followed his dream of finding and painting as many American birds (and some animals) as he could. Audubon saw himself as a scientist, but American naturalists preferred to support the more “scientific” approach of Audubon’s mentor and rival, Alexander Wilson. They rejected Audubon’s approach as too “sentimental” because he made the birds come alive, but some art historians also critiqued Audubon for the “limitations” of his almost photorealist renditions, seeing it as almost too scientific!
Audubon was almost immediately applauded for his work in Europe, but it wasn’t until later that he was recognized in the U.S., and today, Wilson is far less known than Audubon. In a world that was already perceived in the nineteenth-century as one of quickly depleting resources, he documented natural beauty and helped to found a conservation movement that continues today.
Audubon, pursuing his obsession, abandoned his wife, Lucy, and their children for many years at a time. He was almost killed, almost starved at one point, was perceived as mad, and perhaps in a way he was. Driven by his obsession. Audubon was also deeply vain, so sure he was of the rightness of his approach. He also killed sometimes dozens of the birds he loved each day for the sake of precise verisimilitude. But today we appreciate him for his determination and his high standard for excellence, including his passionate approach. I thought this beautiful book was terrific, not erasing some of his flaws, but convincing in depicting his genius. One of my favorite books of the year!
One can find many books on Audubon and his works, but the principal one is Birds of America; there are only a few intact copies of this gorgeous artifact remaining in the world, but libraries usually have good copies. Get the best oversized edition you can find and spend some time with it:
A great and moving YA novel by Gary Schmidt, Okay for Now, is about a boy inspired by Audubon to be an artist, copying his paintings, connecting with the emotional force of Audubon’s birds:
Simon is a third generation bookstore owner with a lot of baggage. His story is related by Aimee DeJongh, in her first graphic novel. He feels a lot oSimon is a third generation bookstore owner with a lot of baggage. His story is related by Aimee DeJongh, in her first graphic novel. He feels a lot of guilt for not speaking out enough for his best friend, Ralf, who was being bullied when he was in primary school; he feels guilty for not intervening as he watches a woman commit suicide. He feels weighed down as his bookstore fails; his wife wants him to sell to the bookstore chain; the offer is good, but he feels he owes his Dad not to sell to them. When he was in school he wanted to be an ornithologist, but he gave up what he really wanted to do to follow his Dad’s wishes. This is one anguished, tormented dude, with anger issues.
At one point he meets a young college woman who wants to read books on magical realism. She tries to help him face all his demons. It gets complicated, but finally, he sort of does.
And then there are these honey buzzards, and. . . magical realism in the story.
The story is about guilt and trauma and healing, elegantly told. I like the black and white drawing very well. Several wordless contemplative pages. Touches of Craig Thompson style, the use of white space, the strong composition, the deft images. Birds! I like the artwork more than the story, I think. Look forward to seeing more from her in the future. ...more