Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Tan's "love of nature began in childhood, but the renowned novelist didn't start paying close attention to birds until 2016, when she combined drawing lessons with birding. She soon realized that she didn't need to travel to bird watch; her large-windowed Northern California home was a bird haven with a roof garden surrounded by trees, vines, and flowers. Tan shares excerpts from her avian journals from 2017 through 2022, a time of discovery and growth, COVID-19 ("the birds are balm") and disastrous wildfires. Tan's fiction-writing prowess inspires her imaginings of what birds are thinking as she chronicles food fights, the "Battle at the Birdbath," bird wooing, parents teaching fledglings, fledglings exploring, and birds at play. She tries to rescue sick birds and chases cats away. She feels especially close to hummingbirds, loves finches and warblers, and is awed by hawks and great horned owls. The more she looks, the more she sees. Her lively sketches include commentary and bird remarks in graphic-novel mode, while her beautifully detailed portraits depict each bird as a distinct personality. Tan is funny and candid. "Birds are creatures of habit in their habitat. Me, too." "I am glutted with avian delights." Readers will feel the same as they bask in Tan's zestful and attentive bird bliss. Copyright 2024 Booklist Reviews.
Kirkus Reviews
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author. In his introduction to Tan's "nature journal," David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a "collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words." For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard "paradise"—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—"a record of my life"—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. "We have a relationship," she writes. "I am in love." By August 2018, her backyard "has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly." Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend's Warbler—"Omigod! It's looking at me. Displeased expression." Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses "spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?" Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, "looks and acknowledges I am there." An ebullient nature lover's paean to birds. Copyright Kirkus 2024 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Reviews
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Publishers Weekly Reviews
The lovely latest from novelist Tan (