Every Bird a Prince

Jenn Reese's Every Bird a Prince is a woodland fantasy for 9 year olds about a girl who rescues a frozen little bird and gets asked to save a kingdom.

What happens

Eren Evers is only really herself on her bike, flying down the trails in the Oregon woods. Everywhere else, life is getting complicated.

Her best friends Kayla and Jessie have made a pact. Everyone writes down the name of their crush and they all reveal them together. Eren doesn't have a crush. So she picks a boy off a mental spreadsheet of pros and cons, writes his name down, and then has to eat the paper. (That's part of the pact.)

On the trail that morning a tiny kinglet smashes into her, stiff with frost. Eren warms the little bird in her scarf. Afterwards the kinglet seems to follow her everywhere, to the classroom window, to the bus stop.

Then the kinglet gives her a feather. When she holds it, the bird can talk. Prince Oriti-ti of the Resplendent Nest needs a champion. The vile frostfangs have already beaten the bears and the squirrels, and the birds are the last kingdom standing.

And that night, frost starts creeping over her mum's hands.

What makes it special is how honestly it gets that sinking feeling of saying yes when you mean no. Eren describes her worry as a vine squeezing her chest. She feels like she's on a raft racing down a river she can't steer. It's something lots of kids will recognise. Who hasn't gone along with something to keep their friends happy?

It's funny too. Eren tells a bird off at the bus stop, then worries that only monsters shout at birds. The bird prince is very grand and very dramatic, and uses they and them.

It's worth knowing that this one reads at the older end of the shelf. Eren is in seventh grade and a lot of the story is about crushes and dates for a school dance. Her mum goes on a date with a man Eren can't stand and comes home to sit with a glass of wine. A younger reader might find the dance talk a bit much. A reader who's starting to notice it all at school might feel very seen.

What to read next

If the frost is what grabs them, The Way Past Winter is set in a land where winter arrived one year and never left, with four children snowed in at the edge of a vast forest.