Distant Feathers
Kindergarten-Grade 2AOne evening, Sedrick Van Pelt hears a tapping on his study window and discovers an enormous red bird peering in at him. Fleeing in fear, Sedrick stumbles and falls, but the giant creature poses no immediate threat. A visitor from another planet, Feathers loves bread of any kind. In time, however, the villagers grow weary of trying to satisfy his voracious appetite and his clumsiness results in townwide havoc. Only after a hurricane roars through the hamlet and blows him away is he truly missed. Days later, he reappears on Sedrick's roof and happily spends the remainder of his years in the Van Pelt yard, regaling everyone with stories about his home planetAEarth. Aside from the punch line, this tale of an unappreciated visitor never gets off the ground. The flippant conversational tone of the text provides some humor but not enough drama to sustain interest. The unfolding of events is choppy and the action is often illogical. The benign blue villagers with long snouts, pointed ears, and a predilection for jaunty plumed hats hint at an otherworldly setting but are curiously flat. Egan's ink-and-watercolor illustrations vary from full-page to small vignettes; while they provide lots of interesting detail, they are less than compelling. Lacking the clever zaniness of Burnt Toast on Davenport Street (1997) or the pithy lesson of Metropolitan Cow (1996, both Houghton), this newest offering falls in the featherweight category.ACarol Ann Wilson, Westfield Memorial Library, NJCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.