Bluebird by Bob Staake

Hardcover, 40 pages

Published April 9th 2013 by Schwartz & Wade 

 

In his most beautiful and moving work to date, Bob Staake explores the universal themes of loneliness, bullying, and the importance of friendship. In this emotional picture book, readers will be captivated as they follow the journey of a bluebird as he develops a friendship with a young boy and ultimately risks his life to save the boy from harm. Both simple and evocative, this timeless and profound story will resonate with readers young and old.

Bob Staake has been working on this book for 10 years, and he believes it is the story he was born to write.

This book is one of the ones that I hadn't read from the list of 2013 Nerdy Book Clubs winner list, so I was excited to find it at the library. There are no words to describe this book... literally, there are no words in it at all. The story is all in the pictures. It is utterly beautiful (and so well deserving of the award!). Telling the most beautiful story in the simplest way, I couldn't help but pull my kids over (and maybe some others... I cannot confirm or deny this though) and we read it and talked about it. It was the greatest conversation with a few kids aged eight and under. Fantastic book!!

Teaching Ideas: 

This is a fantastic book to teach the concept of reading pictures. It lends itself to being a prime mentor text for this with the beautiful story told throughout the novel with only pictures. You can't really call this a "Read Aloud" since there are no words, but it would make a great book to look at and analyze. This one will definitely be used with my middle schoolers because after the picture analysis, the discussions that will be had will be amazing! 

Happy reading!