A Song for Lorkie

PreS-Gr 2—In this unusual picture book from Australia, a yellow bird lives in the Valley of Roofs where one or two birds perch on each dwelling. With the exceptions of Lorkie and Sweetheart, they all sing their own songs. Lorkie has not yet found his song, and Sweetheart has no voice and cannot hear. Lorkie feels sad, slow, and stuck living on the rooftops; in contrast, roads make him feel free and fast. He opts to move to the middle of the Argy-Bargy roundabout with its lollipop trees. There he becomes so happy that he composes his own song. Sweetheart misses Lorkie so she, too, moves to the roundabout. The uneven text is a mix of past-tense sentences with present-tense lyrics from the birds' songs. These lyrics add liveliness to the otherwise tame writing style. The text appears on white backgrounds opposite the illustrations and consistently begins in the top left corner. Frequently large gaps of open white space interrupt the flow of the story. Bowen's crayon and acrylic artwork has a childlike quality and plays with proportion and size by depicting the birds much larger than their surroundings. Lots of black, yellow, brown, and blue fill the assorted shapes that Bowen uses to form creatures and objects in the art. The work opens with repetitive rooftop endpapers and closes with vehicle-patterned pages. This odd story's plot may have limited appeal to children, but it leaves readers with clear messages about asserting one's independence and pursuing individual interests.—Lynn Vanca, Freelance Librarian, Akron, OH