num_pages: 40
description: In this poignant story from Andrew Larsen a child spends time with a beloved grandmother during her final days and experiences love that will last a lifetime. When Grandma gets sick and comes to stay at her grandchilds house she brings her bird feeder. Grandma loves birds. And the child loves the time they now get to have together drawing pictures of birds and talking about interesting things. After a while though Grandmas health declines and she moves to the hospice. Hanging Grandmas bird feeder outside the window there makes things better. After a while though Grandma continues to grow weaker and her ability to interact lessens. Difficult as it is the child adjusts knowing that while the situation keeps changing their love for each other never wavers. Award-winning author Andrew Larsen beautifully captures the special bond between a child and a grandparent and sensitively deals with a childs loss of a loved one. Using the motif of their shared love of birds and its physical manifestation in the form of the bird feeder allows for a continuity in the childs life that puts the loss in a larger context. Larsen offers an authentic straightforward presentation of the process of a loved ones death from being sick to going to the hospice to participating less and less in their relationship to death. It will lead young readers to ask their own questions about life death and how we remember those who die. The cool palette and simple lines in Dorothy Leungs art evoke empathy for the childs experience while the presence of the birds adds life and hope to the visual story.
language: English
title: The Bird Feeder
publisher: Kids Can Press