My Baby Blue Jays

K-Gr 3—This is a charming photo essay about blue jays nesting on the balcony outside the author's New York City home office. The colorful photos and conversational text follow the nest building, egg-laying, and chick rearing, focusing finally on the first fledgling to leave the safety of the nest for the more dangerous realities of life on the ground. Obviously delighted with his window into the avian world, Berendt happily anthropomorphizes the emotions of the intrepid little youngster, but the photos carry it off without a hitch. An elegant little production with ripple-edged photos mounted on soft beige pages (with an eye-grabber on the deep teal cover), this title will slip quite smoothly onto the shelf of springtime books, giving the old first robin a run for its money.—Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY