Review by: Mark Palm

Well it’s YA Book week, so I would be remiss if I didn’t tackle at least one YA title. Usually I try not to change my critical faculties one bit for any book, no matter the style or genre, but I did change my expectations a bit for Nightbird, by Alice Hoffman, because it’s a book meant for middle-grade readers. Whatever you call it, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Twig is the daughter of the best baker in Sidwell, a bucolic small town of the type you often find in the works of Ray Bradbury. This town has a “monster” the way that Loch Ness has Nessie, or the Barrens have the Jersey Devil. This monster actually exists though. He is Twig’s older brother, James, whom the family has hidden away because of a family curse that gave James black wings that enable him to fly. Their life is a lonely one because they can’t have friends, until a new family move nearby, and Twig befriends the younger daughter, Julia. James begins secretly seeing the older daughter, Agate.

Needless to say things begin to speed up after this. One of the real strengths of this book is that even though this books is meant for younger readers you never get the feeling that Ms. Hoffman is talking down her prose or dumbing down her ideas. There are plenty of sub-plots in Nightbirds; Twig’s mysterious absentee father, a parliament of hidden, endangered owls and their secret benefactor, a rash of petty thieveries, a special school play, etc. As busy as the story is it’s never confusing, as Ms. Hoffman gracefully leads us through. Like Bradbury, whom I mentioned earlier, the town of Sidwell is a magical place. There is enough conflict in the story to make it interesting, but nobody comes off like a serious villain. There is a kind of Sepia glow to this book that I found very charming, but it never got sweet or smarmy.

In the end almost everything comes together beautifully, in such a way that is both surprising and inevitable, which isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds, and it works beautifully because of Ms. Hoffman’s smooth and assured touch. She made me want to move to Sidwell.
Who wouldn’t want to live in a town that has its own monster?

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