![]() ![]() Brown takes a direct approach to a difficult subject, suggesting how community rituals provide solace. ![]() Robinson’s illustrations hint at how the improvised funeral enables the children to acknowledge impermanence, his close-ups capturing their concentration as they assemble the memorial. That was how they knew it was dead.” They solemnly bury the bird under the leafy trees, improvise a mourning song, and surround a stone marker with summer flowers, behaving “the way grown-up people did when someone died.” Even as the children imitate grief in response to the wild bird’s death, they genuinely grieve the joy that has been lost: “You’ll never fly again,” they realize. ![]() The sad news arrives on the first page: “The bird was dead when the children found it.” The frowning children gently lift the small brown bird, finding “it was still warm and its eyes were closed. Robinson ( Leo: A Ghost Story) pictures a verdant urban park, where four children-one dressed as a red fox, another wearing blue fairy wings-frolic with a big gray dog. Brown’s 1938 story, best known from a 1958 version illustrated by Remy Charlip, describes a group of children who discover a dead bird. ![]()
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