02/24/2014
On the day Jewel was born, her five-year-old brother, Bird, threw himself off a cliff in an attempt to fly. In the 12 years that have passed since his death, the family hasn’t recovered: Jewel’s grandfather hasn’t spoken for years; her mother is depressed; and Jewel fears that no one will love her as much as her family loved Bird. But then she meets and befriends a boy named John, and has a chance to change her life for the better. In this audio edition, Stenberg turns in a fun, spirited performance. Her narration is smooth and well paced. And, most importantly, Sternberg ably captures the essence of Jewel, her voice full of youthful pluck and a hint of sadness. Although the narrator doesn’t lend the characters particularly unique voices, listeners will have little trouble differentiating who is speaking to whom. Ages 8-12. An Athenaeum hardcover. (Jan.)
Nothing matters. Only Bird matters. And he flew away.
Jewel never knew her brother Bird, but all her life she has lived in his shadow. Her parents blame Grandpa for the tragedy of their family's past; they say that Grandpa attracted a malevolent spirit-a duppy-into their home. Grandpa hasn't spoken a word since. Now Jewel is twelve, and she lives in a house full of secrets and impenetrable silence.
Jewel is sure that no one will ever love her like they loved Bird, until the night that she meets a mysterious boy in a tree. Grandpa is convinced that the boy is a duppy, but Jewel knows that he is something more. And that maybe-just maybe-the time has come to break through the stagnant silence of the past.
Nothing matters. Only Bird matters. And he flew away.
Jewel never knew her brother Bird, but all her life she has lived in his shadow. Her parents blame Grandpa for the tragedy of their family's past; they say that Grandpa attracted a malevolent spirit-a duppy-into their home. Grandpa hasn't spoken a word since. Now Jewel is twelve, and she lives in a house full of secrets and impenetrable silence.
Jewel is sure that no one will ever love her like they loved Bird, until the night that she meets a mysterious boy in a tree. Grandpa is convinced that the boy is a duppy, but Jewel knows that he is something more. And that maybe-just maybe-the time has come to break through the stagnant silence of the past.
Bird
Narrated by Amandla Stenberg
Crystal ChanUnabridged — 6 hours, 10 minutes
Bird
Narrated by Amandla Stenberg
Crystal ChanUnabridged — 6 hours, 10 minutes
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Overview
Nothing matters. Only Bird matters. And he flew away.
Jewel never knew her brother Bird, but all her life she has lived in his shadow. Her parents blame Grandpa for the tragedy of their family's past; they say that Grandpa attracted a malevolent spirit-a duppy-into their home. Grandpa hasn't spoken a word since. Now Jewel is twelve, and she lives in a house full of secrets and impenetrable silence.
Jewel is sure that no one will ever love her like they loved Bird, until the night that she meets a mysterious boy in a tree. Grandpa is convinced that the boy is a duppy, but Jewel knows that he is something more. And that maybe-just maybe-the time has come to break through the stagnant silence of the past.
Editorial Reviews
01/27/2014
Jewel's five-year-old brother, John, nicknamed Bird, was expecting to fly when he jumped off a cliff to his death the day Jewel was born. Twelve years later, Jewel's family is far from having recovered. Grandpa hasn't spoken since, Jewel's father believes that both Grandpa and "duppies" (harmful Jamaican spirits) are responsible for the tragedy, and Jewel's mother, who is of Mexican descent, is depressed and resentful of the family's superstitions. An outsider in her own joyless home and in her small town of Caledonia, Iowa, Jewel takes her troubles to nature, dreaming of becoming a geologist. When she meets a boy named John with big aspirations and struggles of his own, they become friends. Grandpa, however, thinks John is a duppy, and when John betrays Jewel's trust, she's forced to assess her own beliefs. In a thoughtful debut, Chan weaves together topics of race, repressed emotion, and destructive family dynamics, setting events against the beauty of the Midwestern landscape. Jewel's gentle voice offers moments of insight and wisdom as she becomes empowered to move beyond her parents' losses and desires. Ages 8–12. Agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Literary Management. (Jan.)
"Daughter of a Jamaican father and her half-Mexican, half-white mother, Jewel has always felt out of place in her small Iowa town. . . . When Jewel meets John, an adopted black boy staying with his uncle, she finds a kindred spirit, someone as out of place as she is. . . . Chan has carefully crafted John and Jewel as effective foils for each other; their shared interest in science propels multiple metaphors that help Jewel figure out what is solid and knowable versus what must be taken on faith or intuited. . . both character arcs show a deep respect for readers’ abilities to negotiate the complexities of belief and doubt, and to find meaning via character reflection."
This is a slow read—thoughtful and introspective about the dynamics of a grieving family—and contemplative readers will be rewarded by Jewel’s journey."
"The voice of 12-year-old Jewel carries readers through this lyrical and buoyant debut from Crystal Chan. . . . Chan's strong characterizations and her way with words make her a writer to watch."
"Daughter of a Jamaican father and her half-Mexican, half-white mother, Jewel has always felt out of place in her small Iowa town. . . . When Jewel meets John, an adopted black boy staying with his uncle, she finds a kindred spirit, someone as out of place as she is. . . . Chan has carefully crafted John and Jewel as effective foils for each other; their shared interest in science propels multiple metaphors that help Jewel figure out what is solid and knowable versus what must be taken on faith or intuited. . . both character arcs show a deep respect for readers’ abilities to negotiate the complexities of belief and doubt, and to find meaning via character reflection."
"Daughter of a Jamaican father and her half-Mexican, half-white mother, Jewel has always felt out of place in her small Iowa town. . . . When Jewel meets John, an adopted black boy staying with his uncle, she finds a kindred spirit, someone as out of place as she is. . . . Chan has carefully crafted John and Jewel as effective foils for each other; their shared interest in science propels multiple metaphors that help Jewel figure out what is solid and knowable versus what must be taken on faith or intuited. . . both character arcs show a deep respect for readers’ abilities to negotiate the complexities of belief and doubt, and to find meaning via character reflection."
"Jewel is a multilayered, emotional character who struggles to come to terms with her family’s issues. The mixture of superstition and science creates a wonderful juxtaposition in this powerful story about loss and moving on."
Narrator Amandla Stenberg portrays the youthful vulnerability of 12-year-old Jewel as she struggles to bring her family back from their chasm of grief. Stenberg expresses Jewel’s sorrow over the death of her brother, Bird, and her frustration over the Jamaican superstitions her family uses to explain the tragic event. While listeners will easily accept Jewel as a credible character, Stenberg’s narration could be more polished. Her declarative style sometimes fails to capture the full emotional range of the story. Her pacing is rushed, and, without unique voices, each person sounds the same. Jewel’s thoughts tumble over themselves before they can resonate with listeners. While Stenberg pulls off Jewel’s tween persona, a more lyrical, nuanced narration would better capture Chan’s novel. C.A. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
2013-11-02
Jewel Campbell's life began the day her older brother John's tragically ended, a coincidence that's shaped and shadowed her family since. Her Jamaican-immigrant grandfather nicknamed John "Bird," encouraging him to imagine he could fly with disastrous results. He hasn't said a word since and, along with Jewel's dad, blames the catastrophe on evil spirits from Jamaica, duppies. Both have gone to great lengths to repel future supernatural harm (Jewel's white-Mexican mom retains some skepticism). Largely ignored, Jewel is equally in thrall to the family narrative. After the family visits Bird's grave on her 12th birthday, she steals out to climb a tree in a neighbor's field and meets a boy who tells her his name is John. Like Jewel, whose passion is geology, he's a budding scientist with a complex heritage--African-American, adopted by white parents. They exchange secrets. Both feel out of place, moved by forces beyond their control, like the erratic granite boulder Jewel climbs. Jewel's observant reflections on her rural-Iowa world give this debut its considerable charm. As brutal antagonism intensifies among the adults, the focus shifts to characters and events before Jewel's birth, making Jewel less actor than bystander in her own story. For young readers especially, the resolution is uncomfortably vague. Though it loses momentum halfway through, the strong opening bodes well for future endeavors. (Fiction. 10-14)
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169293852 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 01/28/2014 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Age Range: | 8 - 11 Years |
Read an Excerpt
Bird
GRANDPA stopped speaking the day he killed my brother, John. His name was John until Grandpa said he looked more like a Bird with the way he kept jumping off things, and the name stuck. Bird’s thick, black hair poked out in every direction, just like the head feathers of the blackbirds, Grandpa said, and he bet that one day Bird would fly like one too. Grandpa kept talking like that, and no one paid him much notice until Bird jumped off a cliff, the cliff at the edge of the tallgrass prairie, the cliff that dropped a good couple hundred feet to a dried-up riverbed below. Bird’s little blue bath towel was found not far from his body, snagged on a bush, the towel that served as wings. From that day on, Grandpa never spoke another word. Not one.
The day that Bird tried to fly, the grown-ups were out looking for him—all of them except Mom and Granny. That’s because that very day, I was born. And no one’s ever called me anything except Jewel, though sometimes I wish they had. Mom and Dad always said that I was named Jewel because I’m precious, but sometimes I think it’s because my name begins with J, just like John’s name, and because they miss him and didn’t want to give me a normal name like Jenny or Jackie. Because John had a normal name, and now he’s dead.
It was my twelfth birthday today, and everyone was supposed to be happy. It was hard to be happy, though, when Grandpa shut himself up in his room for the whole day, like he does every year on my birthday. Mom and Dad made me a cake with vanilla frosting and sprinkles, gave me a present—some socks from the dollar store, but they’re cute and all—and the three of us went to the cemetery to visit Bird and Granny. I always watch those movies where kids have big birthday parties with music and party hats and huge presents and even ponies, and I think it would be nice to have a birthday like that. Especially the ponies. Just once. Instead, I’ve always had to share my special day with the silence behind Grandpa’s closed door and the silence at the cemetery and the silence that hangs thick between Mom and Dad’s words.
Mom and Dad washed the dishes from my birthday cake and went to bed, but I couldn’t go to sleep, just like every year on my birthday, because I kept imagining what Bird was like, what kind of brother he would have been, and what five-year-olds think when they throw themselves off cliffs.
So I did what I often do when I can’t sleep: I changed into my jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, put on some bug spray, and crept out of the house and into the star-studded night. There’s this huge oak tree just down the road in Mr. McLaren’s field, and I often climb that tree as high as I can, and lean my back against its warm, thick trunk. There, I watch the moon arc through the sky and listen to the whirring of the crickets or the rustling of the oak leaves or the hollow calls of the owl.
For a moment, I thought about going to the cliff where my brother flew. But I knew better than to go there at night.
Now, in my small town of Caledonia, Iowa, we have one grocery store with one cashier, named Susie; three churches; our part-time mayor, who works in our town hall, which also serves as the post office; two restaurants that run the same specials, just on different days; and fourteen other businesses. Things here are as stable as the earth, and that’s how folks seem to like it. No one’s ever told me that going to the cliff should be kept secret, but that’s one of the things about adults: The most important rules to keep are the ones they never tell you and the ones they get the angriest about if you break.
I wouldn’t tell them I go to the cliff anyway, because adults don’t listen to what kids have to say. Not really. If they did, they would actually look at me when I talk, look good and deep and open-like, ready to hear whatever comes out of my mouth, ready for anything. I don’t know any adult who’s ever looked at me like that, not even my parents. So the good stuff, the real things that I’ve seen and experienced, like at the cliff—I keep all that to myself. My family doesn’t fit in as it is.
Anyway, tonight I was making my way down County Line Road, which still radiated heat, and my tennis shoes were scuffing against the gravel when suddenly I got the feeling that something was wrong. Different. A shiver zipped across my skin. I stopped and looked at my oak tree. The moon was waxing, growing slowly toward its milky whole self, and the tree was glowing and dark at the same time, its arms spread wide like a priest’s toward the sky. As I squinted in the silver light, a pit formed in my stomach, and I realized what it was.
Someone was already in my tree.
“Heya,” said a voice. It was a boy’s voice. I tensed up all over. There’s never anyone outside at this time of night, grown-up or kid. Maybe it was a duppy, those Jamaican ghosts that Dad always worried about. Duppies’ powers are strongest at night, Dad says, and they often live in trees. You can tell a duppy lives there when a tree’s leaves blow around like crazy even though there’s not a speck of wind. Or if one of its limbs breaks off for no good reason. If something like that happens there’s definitely a duppy in that tree, right there. Duppies can also be tricky and just show up. Like, they can be in your tree when there was never a duppy there before.
But the boy’s voice carried long and lonely through the night in a way that I didn’t think a duppy’s voice could, and each leaf on each limb was perfectly still, frozen in the moonlight. On any normal night I might have just played it safe, turned around, and run back home, but it was my birthday, my special day, and I wasn’t going to go running away and let a duppy ruin it. So instead I said, “Hey,” back, and I stepped over the shoots of corn, crossing the dry, hard dirt of Mr. McLaren’s field. The boy was up on the third limb—the same limb I was meaning to sit on—and his shadowed legs straddled the branch like a horse, swinging back and forth, back and forth.
He was in my tree and I felt kind of stupid, like I didn’t know what to do.
“What are you doing out here at this time of night?” he asked me. I peered up but couldn’t see his face.
I tried to shrug casually. “I climb my tree sometimes, when I can’t sleep.”
“Is that true?” He said it surprised, but like he didn’t really want an answer, so I didn’t give him one. “But it’s not your tree, now, is it?” he said.
“It’s not yours, either.”
The limb creaked, like he was peering down at me. I squirmed a little in the moonlight. “Is too my tree. I’m John. This is my uncle’s farm, so it’s my tree. I can climb it anytime I want.”
I’m sure he said some other things, but my brain stopped after he said I’m John.
I must have looked as stupid as I felt, because his voice got a little nicer. “You know, not too many other kids live around here in this middle of nowhere. Especially not many who climb trees at night.”
And before I knew it, he was asking me to come up and sit with him, and I was shimmying up the rope that I’d tied and then climbing the warm, tough bark of the tree, hand over hand, legs pushing forever up, until I was sitting on the branch below his. John’s face was still dark, as I was craning my neck up into the cool shadows.
But I was sitting in a patch of moonlight, and he got a good look at me. “Hey,” he said, “what are you, anyway?” The words were curious, not mean. “You’re not from around here.”
A little something tightened inside me, like it did every time I got this question, but I was used to it. Mostly. “I’m half-Jamaican, a quarter white, and a quarter Mexican,” I said.
“Wow,” John said. “I didn’t know people could turn out like that.”
“And I am from around here,” I said, making sure my voice carried over the crickets. “I was born in the house down the road.”
John said, “I’m not trying to insult you or anything. I’ve just never met someone like you.”
I twirled a thick, kinky lock of hair around my finger, then untwirled it. I’ve learned that it’s best to get this conversation out of the way so we can talk about more interesting things. “Well, now you have,” I replied. “And my name’s Jewel.”
He nodded, almost like he already knew that. “Jewel,” he said. His voice lingered over the word. “I like that name.”
“I don’t.”
“It’s memorable. Like, everyone’s going to know they’ve met a Jewel. But ‘John’? Forget it. We’re a dime a dozen.”
“No, you’re not.” The words came out too fast, too harsh, too laden with pain I forgot to hide.
John paused in the darkness, on his third limb. “Okay, maybe a dollar a dozen, then.” He spoke carefully now. “But I still think Jewel is nice.”
We sat in that tree in the middle of the field under the waxing moon. Suddenly he said, “You know, stars are like jewels. But they don’t twinkle like you think. What your eye perceives as twinkling is the light waves refracting through the layers of the atmosphere.”
The way he spoke, he sounded like a teacher. A good teacher. Maybe that’s why I decided to ask a question, not like in school. “Refracting?” I asked.
“The light bends,” he said. “At a lot of different angles, depending on the layers of atmosphere, and that refracting light changes how we perceive the position and size of a star.” His voice hung in the space above me. “The only way to see the stars as they truly are is to get above the atmosphere. Into space.”
There was no breeze that night, just a thin layer of moist air that hung around us, like the entire earth was listening in.
“I never thought about stars like that.”
John laughed, and it was a short, nice laugh. “Just wait until the Perseids show up.”
“The what?”
“The Perseids. A huge meteor shower that takes place in August.”
I had never seen the Perseids before, or even heard of them, and I said so.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Most people can’t see what’s in front of them if they don’t know what they’re looking for. But once you know what you’re looking for, you wonder how you didn’t see it. Just wait: Once you see the Perseids, you’ll see them every year, guaranteed.”
“How do you know so much about stars?” I blurted out.
I heard the smile in his voice. “I’m going to be an astronaut when I grow up.”
John was so different from the other kids in Caledonia. Most kids around here want to be mechanics or nurses or take over the family business. I almost told him that I was going to be a geologist when I grow up, but I didn’t. Instead, I was quiet. If you give up too much of yourself, too fast, then someone can just up and take it away. And a person like me, without too much of my own to start with—well, you need to be careful with what you got.
I don’t know how long we sat there, but sitting in that tree felt different this time around. Maybe I was getting too old. Or maybe it was just strange sitting there with someone else.
I climbed down after a while, and he climbed down after me. I saw him for the first time clearly in the moonlight, and it was then that I realized why I couldn’t see him all that well before: His skin was dark, dark as the night sky.
“You’re McLaren’s nephew?” I blurted out. My mouth was too fast for any politeness. Mr. McLaren is as white as white could get.
John smiled, and his teeth shone like tiny rows of moons. “Sure am. I’m adopted. Raised by white people. It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about being adopted or being raised by white people, but I nodded as if I understood. He held out his hand, and I took it and shook it, just like the grown-up I was becoming. I was surprised at how firm his grip was, like we were going to conquer the world.
It was the best handshake ever.
But handshake or no handshake, as my shoes crunched against the gravel on my way home, I wondered about how I could meet someone named John on this night. As Dad says, there are no coincidences in life. Which is a fancy way of saying that when things are meant to happen, no matter how mysterious or crazy or impossible, they’re going to happen. And I think he’s right.
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