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My Review
Mia and the Hummingbird is a lovely children's book about a little girl forced to move to a new country after a hurricane comes through her hometown. Mia feels out of place and unsure of herself, but like the hummingbird in the story whose nest is blown out of a tree, she adapts and rebuilds her life.
I think this book is really nice, with wonderful illustrations. Young readers will enjoy reading about Mia learning to overcome the obstacles facing her in a new country, and they'll enjoy discovering new, fun facts about hummingbirds as well.
The back of the book includes a glossary of terms for young readers to learn about, as well as a bibliography and some references to other websites/texts for more reading.
Overall, a very nicely put-together children's book.
4 stars.
Author Interview
1. Your background is Architecture, how is that like children’s book writing
Good question! There
are many similarities. In both cases, the appearance of the final product,
whether a book or a building, is important.
In both cases, the end product should evoke a specific emotion. For a
house, the emotion might be cozy, monumental, or well-integrated into the
natural environment. For a children’s
book, the emotion might be funny or scary or comforting. In both architecture
and kids’ books, the image (illustrations in the book) must be well integrated
with the function (book text). Both
processes involve synthesizing a lot of data and ideas to clearly express an
objective. Both processes involve many
steps and the use of specialists. For books the specialists are the editors,
writers, layout designer, illustrator, sales, web designer, etc.
2. What
is the most meaningful part of the story for you
The Foreword is very
meaningful for me. It is a French
proverb, “Little by little, the bird builds it’s nest”. I first heard this on the last day of a
multi-week intensive French course that I took in France. Using the proverb,
the professor’s message was that learning French is a slow process, and yes,
our class made good progress during the course but still have more to
learn. It made me picture a little bird,
coupled with my struggle to learn French and this was all it took to get me
started on my story, Mia and the Hummingbird.
3. Why
do you like being both the writer and illustrator
In Mia and the
Hummingbird, I had a general story idea and a general idea of the
illustrations, and I drew a few pictures first, specifically the bird building
the nest and the bird getting milkweeds as a first step. Then I wrote much of the text and thought of
the images at the same time. Often an image would drop into my mind as I write
a line of text, for example the image of Mia thinking about her homeland. For the illustration of Mia lost on her bike
ride, I spent a lot of time thinking about what the neighborhood might look
like. Likewise when the Little Bird built the second nest, I want to make sure
that it was in a different type of tree than the first nest. The pictures helped me write the story.
4. What
was an example in your life that gave you inspiration for the story
Good question. The
part of the story where Mia rode her bike through the neighborhood, and nothing
looked familiar was based on my experience walking in France one day when I got
lost and didn’t know a lot of French. I
too approach a nearby women and with a shaky voice and tears in my eyes, asked
for help. At the time I was about 50 years older than Mia. The woman was very kind and got me home.
5. What
do you think is most interesting fact about hummingbirds
The fact that I find
most interesting is that the mother hummingbird uses spider silk in weaving the
nest together so that the nest can expand as the baby birds grow.
Meet the Author:
Enter the Giveaway:
MIA AND THE HUMMINGBIRD Book Tour Giveaway
Thank you for sharing your review and the book and author details, this sounds like a wonderful read
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good read.
ReplyDeleteSuch a great topic for a children's book.
ReplyDeleteSuch a great topic for a children's book.
ReplyDeleteI have 2 Hummingbird feeders and we just love watching them.
ReplyDeleteI think this will be so good to read with my kiddos. Educational and teaches a lot of great morals.
ReplyDelete