Helen’s Birds

From Sara Cassidy, acclaimed author of A Boy Named Queen, comes a stunning wordless graphic novel about friendship, loss and hope.

For as long as Saanvi can remember, she has been friends with her elderly neighbor Helen. They play cards and garden together and, especially, care for the wild birds that visit Helen’s yard. When Helen dies suddenly, a “For Sale” sign goes up, and movers arrive, emptying the house of its furniture and stripping the yard of its birdfeeders. The sparrows and hummingbirds disappear.

Soon a bulldozer tears down Helen’s house. All winter, Saanvi walks numbly past the property as developers begin to build condos. Then one spring day, amid the dust and turmoil of construction, she finds a weathered playing card wedged between two rocks. She holds it to her chest, and finally sobs.

After a tearful night, Saanvi wakes inspired. She slathers peanut butter on pinecones to hang from tree branches, hammers together a birdhouse from scrap wood and drags a kitchen stool outside to hold a bowl of water. Finally, she retrieves a nest that has been unraveling on Helen’s old property and places it in a tree in her own yard. Saanvi’s yard soon fills with Helen’s birds. They have a home again.

This beautifully illustrated, wordless graphic novel shows Saanvi’s journey through close friendship, then hollowing loss and change, until she finally finds hope.

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.1
Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

Sara Cassidy’s children’s books include finalists for the Governor General’s Literary Award in Young People’s Literature, Chocolate Lily Award, City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize, Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award and the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. Her early novel Genius Jolene won a BC Book Prize. Her most recent book for young readers is Star Sailor, The Story of Words. She also writes for adults. Sara lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Sophie Casson has illustrated more than twenty-five books, including The Artist and Me by Shane Peacock, a finalist for the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, and Helen’s Birds by Sara Cassidy, selected as part of IBBY Canada’s Silent Book collection. Her highly acclaimed illustrations are inspired by etchings, silkscreen works and Japanese woodblock prints. Sophie’s award-winning work has also appeared in the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times and Nature, as well as in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Sophie lives in Montreal, Quebec.

• Globe 100 ListCommended 2019
• OLA Best BetsCommended 2019