The Horn Book Guide

LITERATURE

Ruddell, Deborah

Today at the Bluebird Café: A Branchful of Birds

40 pp. | McElderry | February, 2007 | Trade ISBN 978-0-689-87153-5 $15.99

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Joan Rankin. This book presents twenty-two rhymes about birds, some apt portraits and some apt nonsense. Ruddell's rhymes are neat, her scansion impeccable. Rankin's airy, light-filled watercolors pull it all together; with equal aplomb, she depicts an ordinary kingfisher, an anthropomorphic puffin, and a surreal clothesline laden with objects as red as a cardinal--"a ruby, a wagon, / a flame from a dragon."

Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2007