Me: Interesting story.

The Rabbit: * fell asleep as I was reading*

Guinea Pigs: *were already asleep and stayed that way* ( )

Days of the Blackbird is about a girl who is very close with her dad and he ends up getting very ill. The blackbird is a bird that used to be white and it would sing in the trees with all of the other birds and they would all fly south for the cold winters. When the father became sick, the white bird stayed behind and would sing them songs from outside of a chimney every day. they hardly recognized the blackbird because it was full of soot but they recognized its beautiful singing voice. This would be a great book to read to 3rd or 4th graders because of the text is a little lengthy and there are some vocab words that they could learn throughout the story. ( )

A nice fable, inspired by (according to the author's note) a scrap of folklore. I don't understand the rigid solemnity of the faces - they were more like the marble statues one sees representing southern Europe than they were like real people, imo. ( )

This is the tale of how the blackbird came to be in Italy. Gemma and her father Gennaro love to listen to the birds sing each spring and summer. When Gennaro gets ill, Gemma begs the birds to stay. All of the birds leave except for a white bird. The bird stays through the winter and keeps warm near chimneys had fires going. The smoke turns the white bird black. This was a cute folktale to explain a holiday in Italy on January 29th-31st called "Days of the Blackbird". These are the coldest days of the year. The colors used in the illustrations are bright and vivid. It was also nice to see that the characters in the book had darker skin tone and actually look Italian rather than just pale white. There were a few Italian words used in the story Each word was defined; however, there was no pronunciation guide for these words. Clever folktale from a foreign country.

This is a tale of northen Italy. Gemma and her father, Duca Gennaro, live in a house with a Great Hall and acourtyard that fill with birds of all colors through the spring and summer. They all sing to the duke, but his favorite is La Colomba. When the duke falls ill and Gemma is worried,La Colomba Each day she sings to Duca Gennaro even there had snows and strong winds. Finally duke recovered. About love between father and daughter and bird. K-3