Make Room! Two Many Birds by Cindy Derby

Housing is in short supply in Birdville, and birds are  flocking  to rent a roost in a leafless apartment. The line is long, and the prospective landlord is a curmudgeonly cop, a blackbird with a megaphone whose rules are authoritarian:

NO RESTING! NO NESTING! NO PESTING!

NO HAIR GEL! NO POOPING ON THE GROUND!

(A Birda-Potty is provided on the grounds.)

The avian authoritarian surveils the premises strictly from his towering seat, abandoning bis watch only for his acorn meals, served by a servile waiter in black tie. The rest of the birds gingerly clutch their crowded twigs in fear, afraid of an infraction which will leave them perchless.

But there is a free spirit among the feathered residents who sneaks her nest in, concealed as a hairdo, and inside that nest are ....

... which in due course, become...

TWO MANY BIRDS!!!!!!

But when the intractably curmugeonly cop evicts the young mother and her brood, the birds of a feather flock together, and taking flight to a nearby pasture, they cultivate the watchman's acorn stock and grow enough trees for a powerful flock of their own, filling the air with the sweet song of birds, and with new signage:

NO SHOES? NO SHIRT?

NO PROBLEM!

FREE AS A BIRD is the watchword for Cindy Derby's new flight-of-fancy, Two Many Birds (Roaring Brook, 2020). Author-illustrator Derby, who was the recent winner of the 2021 Caldecott Medal for her illustrations in Deborah Underwood's Outside In, makes use of her insightful and unique storytelling and artwork in this latest timely story. There always room for one (or two) more in this off-beat story of population growth that also advocates planting plenty of oak trees. For another quirky story written and illustrated by Cindy Derby, check out her recent outing, How To Walk An Ant.

"... worth perching prominently on the shelf," tweets Publishers Weekly's starred review.

A Walk on the Wild Side: Mr.Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown

EVERYONE WAS PERFECTLY FINE WITH THE WAY THINGS WERE.

EVERYONE BUT MR. TIGER.

MR. TIGER WAS BORED WITH ALWAYS BEING SO PROPER.

Mr. Tiger lives in a clearly upright and uptight world. The cookie-cutter row houses are tall and narrow, uniformly grey and brown to match the inhabitants, who are dressed decorously in Victorian style, with small bustles for the ladies and long, tight-fitting frock coats for the gentlemen. Mr. Tiger himself is totally fitted out in impeccable haberdashery, from his tall top hat to his high-collar and tiny butterfly bow tie, with stiff-upper lip etiquette to match.

But when a few young ones make the slightest attempt at a romp, a passing horse, strolling sedately on her hind legs, lowers her lorgnette to admonish them earnestly:

"NOW CHILDREN, PLEASE DO NOT ACT LIKE WILD ANIMALS!"

But unlike his bland fellow pedestrians, Tiger's bright orange fur stands out in the crowd, and when he hears the lady warning the youngsters, he suddenly feels the same urge to break out of the mold. He drops down on all fours and has an immediate epiphany.  A small change in altitude brings a great change in attitude. Four legs are better than two! Tiger sheds his togs, leaps upon a rooftop, and lets out a full-throated ROAR! and takes off for the woodsy wilds where his inner beast leaps and lopes freely.

In his latest, Mr. Tiger Goes Wild (Little, Brown, 2013), Caldecott artist Peter Brown uses the picture book page, itself a metaphor for self-expression in a controlled environment, to emphasize his hero's urge to think outside the box, as the transformed Tiger strips to his stripes and and bounds, au naturel, off page right, for his walk on the wild side, where stylized rampant greenery surrounds him.

Brown's work as an illustrator, with its careful  draftsmanship set off with judicious use of orange, is perfect for this tale, in which Tiger finds the life of the solitary hunter lacks only one thing--a social network, and it seems that when Tiger returns to town in his flowery jacket, everyone else has decided to loosen their cravats and occasionally go quadrupedal themselves. Brown knows how to use the page turn as a delightfully dramatic device, and his juxtaposition of the dull-toned vertical world of the town with the glowing colors and flowing curves of the lateral landscape of the wilderness provides just the right contrast. Despite its stylistic sophistication and sly sociological premise, kids will giggle at Tiger's transformation and easily get the essence of this story, frequently compared by reviewers to Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are.

Peter Brown's other notable works include The Curious Garden, YOU WILL BE MY FRIEND! (Starring Lucille Beatrice Bear), and his Caldecott-winning illustrations for Creepy Carrots!

How Many Is Too Many? Too Many Fairies: A Celtic Tale by Margaret Read McDonald

There was once an old woman who hated housework. One day she began to grumble.

"WORK! WORK! WORK!"

"HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE!

But it seems that this is her lucky day. Her complaints call in a troupe of fairies.

"Your luck has come! Open the door.

Let me in and you'll work no more."

One by one the fairies enter and take up her hated chores.

"Clankety clankety!" One does the dishes.

"Swishety swishety!" Another sweeps the floors.

"Flumpety Flumpety!" A third straightens the bedclothes.

"Clickety clickety!" The final fairy makes the knitting needles fly.

The work is being done, but the racket in the little cottage is unbearable. The old woman finally shouts:

"Fairies! STOP!"

TOO MANY FAIRIES!

But instead of dropping the work and leaving, the fairies begin to undo all their work. Dishes and floor are re-dirtied; the bedclothes and knitting are all undone and tangled on the floor!What to do? The old woman locks her messy cottage up behind her and goes to see the wise woman of the village for advice. The wise woman tells her to turn everything in her cottage upside down, lock the door against the fairies no matter what they do, and then gives the old woman some special advice.

"And NEVER complain again!"

The angry fairies try all their tricks to get inside and do all the work all over again, even calling upon the broom to open the door, but the head-downward broom cannot obey. Then, with the fairies at last vanquished, the old woman sets out to put everything to rights. It's more work than ever, and the old woman still doesn't like doing it.

"Work! Work! Work! How I...

She stopped just in time.

...love it! Love it! LOVE IT!

Margaret McDonald's Too Many Fairies: A Celtic Tale (Marshall Cavendish, 2010), cheerily illustrated by Susan Mitchell, is a jolly Celtic version of the old folktale best told by Margot and Harve Zemach, It Could Always Be Worse: A Yiddish Folk Tale (Michael Di Capua books) in which a grumpy head of household learns an equally pointed lesson about constant complaints.

Where the Heart Is: Home by Alex T. Smith

Once there was a house...

...a house that was a home. And in the house lived four best friends.

They were called One, Two, Three, and Four.
They lived happily ever after until....

...until, well, ennui sets in as it does in the happiest of households. The four friends find their lives cozy but not altogether...fulfilling. One decides that they should broaden their experiences by becoming pirates. Two opts for climbing mountains and learning to yodel; Three nixes yodeling and suggests that they all live in a deep cave, collecting the flora and fauna to be found there. Four has an altogether different agenda:

"We should move to the big city and go to parties and boogie-woogie all night long!"

Obviously there is no way to compromise on such diverse dreams! Finally the dissension rises to such a peak that the four friends decide to divide their mutual shares in their former home and part company to pursue their own bliss.

One takes the door and with the addition of a mast with a Jolly Roger, begins to sail the seven seas. Two takes the walls and stomps off up the nearest mountain to begin her vocal exercises; Three scurries off with the windows and wends his way to the deepest cave he can find to collect bugs; and Four takes the floor and two-steps off to the city to boogie all night. The four become their own best friends and begin to follow their dreams happily.

But in the best tradition of picture book friendships, they soon discover that their new lives, while exciting, lack something that they also need just as much. Finally, they return to the site of their former dwelling to reconstruct their home and their friendship under new arrangements. Their cozy house is restored with just one new feature--wheels--so that the four friends can share their new interests and the coziness of home at the same time!

"Now we can go everywhere together," they said.

And they did.

Alex T. Smith's latest Home (Tiger Tales, 2010) is a light-hearted look at a heavy issue in friendship and love, how to be an individual and yet part of a happy relationship with others. Smith's charming and quirky illustrations give this little parable zest and kid appeal. Young readers may not be able to verbalize the life lesson here, but like their elders, they will sense it in this sweet little story which shows that sometimes you can go home again.