A little boy looks forward to his visit with Gramma, excited to learn how to earn the trust of her chickadees and feed them from his hand in Mary Bevis and Consie Powell’s children’s book, A Bird on my Hand.
“Don’t scare my birds,” Gramma warns as she patiently teaches her grandson to hold his hand steady. “It took me a long time to build their trust.”
The little boy learns it’s as much a trust exercise for him as it is for the chickadees as he tries to hold still when the birds approach the sunflower seeds in his hand.
“Can I trust you?” he wonders as the birds get closer. “You won’t peck at my hand?”
One by one, the birds flutter over to take seeds from the boy’s hand. He flinches and scares the first one away, but more come and soon all timidity evaporates.
Upon returning to his home in the city, the boy decides to try teaching the chickadees at his house to take seeds from his hand, and Gramma soon arrives to help out.
“Three times a day we sit by the feeders and the birds fly around us. We talk softly,” the little boy relates. “On the third morning Gramma says, ‘the birds know us now. Let’s see if they’ll trust you.’”
Before long, the little boy has befriended his neighborhood’s chickadees.
An array of beautiful artwork by Powell accompanies the story, capturing the lively, little chickadees and the isolation of Gramma’s cabin, nestled in a dark green forest.
A Bird on my Hand can be purchased either from local independent bookstores, online at www.RavenWords.com, and at other retail stores.
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