Deepak Dalal’s The Paradise Flycatcher is an animal rescue story for 8 year olds about a squirrel who vanishes and the birds who go looking for him.<\/p>\n
Every evening the birds of the Rose Garden gather at the fountain to drink and gossip, and Snowdrop the white-headed squirrel is always there with them. One evening he isn’t. Mitalee watches from her window until the light goes and the birds fly off to roost.<\/p>\n
She’s up at dawn searching. Every pile of leaves, every bush, every tree. Nothing.<\/p>\n
What she notices next is stranger than the empty garden. The birds have flocked to the neighbours’ bungalow, and then, one by one, they fly straight in through the open door. Birds don’t go into houses. Squirrels certainly don’t. They are that worried about their friend.<\/p>\n
The house belongs to Chintu, a big jowly boy who loathes Snowdrop and owns a catapult. It goes exactly as badly as you’d expect.<\/p>\n
Those catapults need flagging. Three boys chase the birds out and shoot at them for fun. A squirrel is hit in the leg and lets out a scream that Mitalee can hear, and it drags itself to the trees. All of this happens in the opening chapter.<\/p>\n
If your child can’t bear animals being hurt, that’s a genuine reason to pick something else. If they can manage it, the book is absolutely on their side. The cruelty is never funny here. One of the three boys drops his catapult afterwards and can’t join in the cheering, and that shame turns out to matter.<\/p>\n
The real pleasure is the birds. Dalal lets you hear what they say to each other, and they sound like a village committee. Kabul the bulbul is bossy and brave and tells the magpie-robin off for crying. Bongo the drongo has an excuse ready for any job that looks like effort.<\/p>\n
Then Snowdrop turns up on a website, photographed and priced, on a page selling exotic animals to people with too much money. His white head makes him rare, which is exactly why he was taken. Getting him back means a long flight south to find a flycatcher whose white tail streams out behind him.<\/p>\n
A child who will take an animal’s side against every adult in the room should get on with The Last Bear, which is in the library too. April goes to an Arctic island with her dad, is told there are no polar bears left there, and finds one anyway, starving and a very long way from home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Deepak Dalal’s The Paradise Flycatcher is an animal rescue story for 8 year olds about a squirrel who vanishes and the birds who go looking for him. Every evening the birds of the Rose Garden gather at the fountain to drink and gossip, and Snowdrop the white-headed squirrel is always there with them. One evening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10676,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9176,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The Last Bear","lr_seo_hook":"A beloved squirrel vanishes and his bird friends go looking for him."},"book_tag":[18],"age_group":[26],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[253],"class_list":["post-9314","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-animal-books","age_group-books-for-8-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-deepak-dalal"],"yoast_title":"The Paradise Flycatcher by Deepak Dalal | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A beloved squirrel vanishes and his bird friends go looking for him. For ages 8+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n