When their parents disappear in the middle of the night, young sisters Summer and Bird set off on a quest to find them. A cryptic picture message from their mother leads them to a familiar gate in the woods, but comfortable sights quickly give way to a new world entirely--Down--one inhabited by talking birds and the evil Puppeteer queen. Summer and Bird are quickly separated, and their divided hearts lead them each in a very different direction in the quest to find their parents, vanquish the Puppeteer, lead the birds back to their Green Home, and discover the identity of the true bird queen.
With breathtaking language and deliciously inventive details, Katherine Catmull has created a world unlike any other, skillfully blurring the lines between magic and reality and bringing to life a completely authentic cast of characters and creatures.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Sisters, Mothers, and Magic
By Cordelia
I read this book as an adult, but I wish it had come out when I was eleven or twelve. This is the kind of book that would have helped to shape the person I became.It deals with issues like sisterhood (which seems simple, but ask any pair of sisters just how complicated their relationship can be), the pure but hardly selfless love of children for their mother, the selfless but sometimes conflicted love of a mother for her children, and a strained relationship between parents, and how it affects their children. All of these difficult topics are approached head-on, and unflinchingly, but with a strange and alien filter of magic and folklore that makes the book more accessible to a young and imaginative audience. It is a story about heroism, about love in all forms, and about the magic in the world that is always there. I loved it, and would read it again and again, and I'm saving it to read aloud to my daughter."We lose our mothers and look for them everywhere."
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.Great for all readers from 'tweeners on up
By Jerry M. Withers
Finished Summer and Bird last night - great family story with a good arc, a touch of mystery with fine foreshadowing, nearly always elegant and precise prose often bordering on poesy, and highly recommended as one of the best fantasy novels I've read (and I've read many hundreds of them). Far beyond any usual expectations, not just those for a first effort. Can't wait for her next novel.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.Summer and Bird
By Ruskin Teeter
I just emailed my DIL to order three copies of SUMMER AND BIRD for my pre-teen granddaughters and send the bill to me. This is a very good book - thoughtful and serious, yet fanciful enough to appeal to young readers. On the outside, it's a lyrical story of two sisters, Summer and Bird, who set out to find their parents after they mysteriously disappeared from their home in the dead of night. On the inside, it's the story of a family's disintegration, but with a sweet, not a bitter or sad ending. That ending is foreshadowed by an early reference to a verse in the King James version of Genesis: "I will not let thee go except thou bless me."I believe Katherine Catmull's rich and fluid prose will appeal to a broader audience than was originally intended. Parents will appreciate her familiarity with Kafka, Keats and Blake, as well as the challenging vocabulary she sets before their children - words like "cerulean," "nexus," "hieroglyphic," and "balustrade." And who cannot appreciate a well-turned phrase - "a rushing sound beneath the quiet," "a white wing edged with rippling sable," or "an appetite opened wide as a hatchling's beak."As an aside, when I first glimpsed the title I read it to be "Summer Bird," and I half expected a story about the famous racehorse of that same name, winner of the 2009 Belmont Stakes, and now retired to stud at Winstar Farm in Kentucky. But alas, the story of that famous racehorse family - Storm Bird, Dear Birdie, Birdstone, and Mine That Bird - will have to wait. Who to better write it than Katherine Catmull?
