Swallows zip around a wetland and forest before heading out on their migration from Europe to Africa, encountering an incredible variety of other birds along the way. They swoop through marshlands and savannas, crossing deserts and seas. Enormous storks glide on currents, gannets dive, and tiny weavers spin enormous nests. Every page turn explores a different habitat, and the illustrations are pockmarked with short tidbits of information. A small redheaded swallow is hidden somewhere on each spread, giving readers a reason to examine every nook and cranny. This French import's colorful, stylized drawings teem with detail and give a sense of plumage and size, even with the somewhat cartoonish renderings. The mishmash of facts scattered about each page makes it easy to dip in and out, and it's sure to offer new tidbits upon each return examination. It concludes with a brief mention of man-made challenges that birds face but offers no concrete suggestions, and it lacks back matter. Still, avian enthusiasts will be delighted by the featherweight introduction to the wonderful world of birds.

A hodgepodge of bird facts.While there is a throughline to this book-the annual migration of swallows from Europe to Africa-it may take young listeners most of the book before they realize it, as it's a subtle aspect that is buried in an avalanche of seemingly miscellaneous facts about many different species of birds. From habitats and nesting habits to prey and how birds fly, the facts come hard and fast in small paragraphs of text scattered across the pages, though there isn't much rhyme or reason to their order-wingspan is used several pages before it is defined-and some information is repeated, even on the same page. Rzezak's stylized birds have expressive eyebrows that unfortunately often make them look angry. The stylization can also at times make species look too similar to one another, as on the page shared by the sociable weavers and the swallows, which differ in shape only in their tails. On a page with lots of birds on a power line, the one redheaded swallow readers are told to find on every spread is among a group labeled blackbirds instead of with its fellow swallows at the other end of the line, and its body type matches the blackbirds'. Various words are bolded in the text, species names among them, but there is no glossary, and the book lacks backmatter and a map as well, serious lacks in a nonfiction text for children.Flock away from this one. (Nonfiction. 4-8)