K-Gr 3-This story, set in Calcutta, is based on a real person. Noor Nobi sews clothes to support his three children. When they are lost in an accident, he is overwhelmed with despair and unable to work. Weeks later, while walking through the market, he notices the cages crammed with birds, and he longs to free them. With the little he has in his pocket, he buys one of them and releases it in the shade of a banyan tree. Resolved, he works harder than ever before to earn money to buy more birds. With a new mission in his heart, he returns the next week to purchase as many as he can, nursing the frail ones back to health so he can set them free. The author includes background information on Noor Nobi and photographs of her visit to India and to the tailor's workshop. Spectacularly illustrated in gouache, this story of grief turned to compassion is lovely to look at and elegantly told.-Alexa Sandmann, Kent State University, OH Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

This lavishly illustrated title offers a hopeful story about surviving grief. In the crowded streets of Calcutta, Nobi, a tailor, works hard to support his family. Then his wife and children are killed, and Charles describes the tragedy in a single, spare sentence: He was working when the accident happened e accident that took them from him forever. After weeks of immobilizing anguish, Nobi buys some caged birds at the market, sets them free, and finds some of his weighty sorrow released. Eventually, he earns the neighborhood title of Birdman. Charles, who based her vivid, poetic text on a true story (explained in a lengthy afterword), is frank about the pain of loss, but focuses on the uplifting message that acts of kindness can ease grief. The illustrators extend the story's spirit-healing themes in vibrant folk-art paintings, gloriously patterned with flowers, Hindu symbols, and soaring birds. For more about coping after a loved one's death, suggest Alan Durant's Always and Forever (2004); Uma Krishnaswami's Monsoon (2003) gives another picture-book view of India.

Noor Nobi makes dresses for children on his sewing machine in Calcutta to support his own three children. When they are taken from him in a terrible accident, he is in despair. But he goes to the market and purchases, with the smallest of sums, a tiny, sickly bird, and releases it back to the world. He is so moved by this act that he goes to work at his sewing machine with renewed strength, and every Monday releases the birds he has purchased and nursed back to health. Basing this on a true story, Charles ends her tale with a long afterword about the real birdman and his new family. It's a bit disconcerting that there is no explanation of how Noor lost his children, and the text is rather stilted. However, the illustrations, done in gouache in brilliant jewel-like hues, have elements of magical realism in their pattern and geometry and combine with the theme of the story to lift the reader's spirit. (Picture book. 6-9)