The Strange Birds of Flannery O'Connor, A Life
The Strange Birds of Flannery O'Connor, A Life
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★ A New York Times Best Children's Book of 2020
★ Selected for 2021 Society of Illustrators Original Art Exhibition
★ Nominated for a 2021 Ezra Jack Keats Illustrator Award
★ A 2022 Book All Young Georgians Should Read
★ 2020 Eureka! Nonfiction Children’s Book Honor Award
Written by Amy Alznauer
Illustrated by Ping Zhu
As a young girl, writer Flannery O’Connor was captivated by the chickens in her yard. She’d watch their wings flap, their beaks peck, and their eyes glint. At age six, her life was forever changed when she and a chicken she had been training to walk backwards were featured in the Pathé News. She realized then that people were interested in the strange oddities of life. While she loved birds of all varieties and kept several species around the house as a child, it was peacocks that eventually came to dominate her adult life. “My quest, whatever it was actually for, ended with peacocks. Instinct, not knowledge, led me to them...I intend to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply, for I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs.”— Flannery O’Connor.
Written by Amy Alznauer with devotional attention to all things odd, and radiantly marking the children's book debut of illustrator Ping Zhu, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor explores the beginnings of an author’s lifelong obsession with the magnificent oddities of our world.
ISBN: 978-1-59270-295-4
12” (W) x 12” (H) • 64 pages • HCJ • Ages 4-8
AWARDS & REVIEWS
★ A New York Times Best Children's Book of 2020
★ Nominated for a 2021 Ezra Jack Keats Illustrator Award
★ Selected for 2021 Society of Illustrators Original Art Exhibition
★ A 2022 Book All Young Georgians Should Read
★ 2020 Eureka! Nonfiction Children’s Book Honor Award
"Like O’Connor, this gangly art object of a book tracing her first forays as a writer to an outsize fascination with the chickens in her childhood backyard is a ‘strange bird,’ in the most wondrous of ways. ‘There was something about strangeness,’ a young O’Connor realized after her trained bantam drew fame, ‘that made people sit up and look.’ Alznauer pairs a grounded, authentic vernacular with a lyricism that takes flight, while Zhu’s depiction of odd human proportions against brilliant brushstroke plumage stuns." —Jennifer Krauss, The New York Times
"Amy Alznauer traces the writer’s gothic style to her Catholic childhood in Georgia... As Ms. Alznauer writes: ‘In that brief moment of fame, Flannery had a revelation. People didn’t want to see any old chicken; they wanted a weird one. There was something about strangeness that made people sit up and look.’ There’s a responsive touch of weirdness in Ping Zhu’s artwork for this lovely book, with its glowing colors, bold shapes, and proportions that shift between realistic and outlandish. The bright plumage in a final soaring image suggests what a strange bird O’Connor was herself." —The Wall Street Journal
“This picture-book biography, beginning in Flannery O’Connor’s childhood and ending with her untimely death, shines a light on her love of strangeness… With its memorable opening line, ‘Right from the start young Flannery took a shine to chickens,’ the book celebrates her fascination with life’s peculiarities—and death. A striking, quirky ode to a unique vision.” —Kirkus
“Like the best children’s books, Alznauer’s words recognize the cleverness of their audience; they never condescend or talk down. Zhu’s work reminds us that illustrations shouldn’t flatten the world either. Fluent in the grammar of both abstract and representational art, her work is full of dimension and color, symmetry and asymmetry, life and breath. The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor holds potential enough to inspire its youngest readers, and to stoke the smoldering embers of curiosity in its oldest. “ —Plough
“In pitch-perfect harmony, writer Amy Alznauer and artist Ping Zhu honor the life of the prominent Georgia author and her affinity for the feathered species. Zhu’s painted scenes wow the eyes with dazzling color, fiddling marvelously with perspective and filling super-large, thick-stock pages. This nuanced and multilayered effort includes extra biographical material.” —Julie Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution