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INTERMEDIATE FICTION
Moss, N. West

Birdy

288 pp. | Little/Ottaviano | February, 2026 | Trade ISBN 9780316446419 $17.99
(2) 4-6 Eleven-year-old Birdy and her younger brother, Mouse, leave New York City to live with distant cousins upstate after their mother’s death. Birdy is skeptical of the elderly Mitzie and Shadow because of their advanced age, their rural location, her own complicated grieving, and her longstanding role as Mouse’s protector. When another relative is located in Maine and joins them upstate, Birdy is even less welcoming, but she slowly warms up to Uncle Clay. Just as the siblings seem likely to have a permanent home, Birdy’s earlier bad decisions put that outcome at risk. Moss does an excellent job of bringing readers into the protagonist’s thoughts, making her standoffish behavior feel logical rather than alienating and showing how she evolves in her understanding of how to grieve a loving but imperfect parent. The book’s celebration of found family is heartfelt; the relationships change each of the characters in turn. The story is slightly less successful when it addresses Birdy’s relationship to the wider community—a plot thread involving a mean girl is only somewhat satisfyingly resolved—but as a whole the book is an emotionally complex portrait of a tween at a turning point in her life, offering readers a cathartic and engrossing narrative experience.
Reviewer: Sarah Rettger | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2026

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