Review by Booklist Review
Tan's "love of nature" began in childhood, but the renowned novelist didn't start paying close attention to birds until 2016, when she combined drawing lessons with birding. She soon realized that she didn't need to travel to bird watch; her large-windowed Northern California home was a bird haven with a roof garden surrounded by trees, vines, and flowers. Tan shares excerpts from her avian journals from 2017 through 2022, a time of discovery and growth, COVID-19 ("the birds are balm") and disastrous wildfires. Tan's fiction-writing prowess inspires her imaginings of what birds are thinking as she chronicles food fights, the "Battle at the Birdbath," bird wooing, parents teaching fledglings, fledglings exploring, and birds at play. She tries to rescue sick birds and chases cats away. She feels especially close to hummingbirds, loves finches and warblers, and is awed by hawks and great horned owls. The more she looks, the more she sees. Her lively sketches include commentary and bird remarks in graphic-novel mode, while her beautifully detailed portraits depict each bird as a distinct personality. Tan is funny and candid. "Birds are creatures of habit in their habitat. Me, too." "I am glutted with avian delights." Readers will feel the same as they bask in Tan's zestful and attentive bird bliss.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The lovely latest from novelist Tan (Where the Past Begins) brings together selections from "nine personal journals filled with sketches and handwritten notes of naive observations" about birds spotted in her northern California backyard between 2017 and 2022. A few of the entries are somber in tone, including one recounting how Tan had to take down her feeders during a 2017 salmonellosis outbreak among Pine Siskins, whose large flocks make them vulnerable to viral illness. However, most of the notes are more lighthearted, as when Tan narrates the squabbles between dark-eyed juncos, lesser goldfinches, and fox sparrows over a pile of sunflower seeds as if it were a wrestling match. Tan sprinkles in some trivia, as when she explains that songbirds dispense seeds uneaten from feeders because they're looking for the ones with the most oil, but she largely sticks to laid-back observations about sparrows playing, hummingbirds eating out of her hand, and a hermit thrush unsuccessfully attempting to slip into a cage feeder. Tan's drawings, a highlight of the volume, trace the development of her artistry, with respectable if amateurish early colored pencil sketches giving way to impressively detailed and realistic depictions of the oak titmouse, chestnut backed chickadee, and great horned owl. Bird lovers may not learn much, but Tan's enthusiasm and jaunty descriptions of her avian subjects enchant. This hits the mark. Illus. Agent: Sandra Dijkstra, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Apr.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Novelist Tan returns to nonfiction (after Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir) with an epistolary nature journal recounting her new ventures in amateur ornithology. Following David Allen Sibley's contemplative foreword (narrated with measured engagement by Evan Sibley), Tan describes how, after the tumult of 2016, she began to take a deeper interest in the birds visiting her California backyard. She filled page after page with musings on the birds' social relationships, personality quirks, her building sense of mindful presence, and the bane of birders everywhere--hungry squirrels. The journal entries vacillate between pensive introspection and hilariously unvarnished retellings of the messier bits of birding--aerial diarrhea, for instance. Tan's narrative style remains steady throughout, restrained both in volume and emotion. Tan's reserve as she narrates the audiobook allows the wit and humor of her everyday writings to reflect the largely quiet nature of her entries. While the book could have easily relied on allegories of nature and birds, it resists that temptation. Tan instead reminds readers that there is worth and beauty in simplicity. VERDICT A quiet ode to the simple joy of paying attention that will inspire readers to pick up a pair of binoculars.--Shanel Slater
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author. In his introduction to Tan's "nature journal," David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a "collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words." For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard "paradise"--oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs--observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries--"a record of my life"--move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. "We have a relationship," she writes. "I am in love." By August 2018, her backyard "has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly." Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend's Warbler--"Omigod! It's looking at me. Displeased expression." Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses "spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?" Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, "looks and acknowledges I am there." An ebullient nature lover's paean to birds. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
