The Bird Singers: How Two Boys Discovered the Magic of Birdsong
Language: English
Published by Greystone Books, 2025
- Hardcover
- New
Seller: Brook Bookstore On Demand, Napoli, NA, ItalyBrook Bookstore On Demand
AbeBooks seller since October 11, 2022
Condition: New
£ 21.21
Quantity: Over 20 available
Add to basketSeller Inventory # ESNQGPHLMW
- Title
- The Bird Singers: How Two Boys Discovered the Magic of Birdsong
- Author
- Boucault, Jean
- Publisher
- Greystone Books
- Publication year
- 2025
- Condition
- new
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 177840183X
- ISBN 13
- 9781778401831
- Item weight
- 0.4 kilograms
In the vein of H is for Hawk and Raising Hare this moving memoir shines a light on the transformative power of nature as it tells the story of two boys, Jean and Johnny, who learned the language of birds.
‘I read this book in one sitting. I loved the story of the two boys, of their relationships with the nature around them, their community, and their relationship with each other.’ —Marc Hamer, author of How to Catch a Mole and Spring Rain
This captivating book brings together two birds of a feather: Jean and Johnny, boys from very different worlds growing up in a small village in France. Jean is the genteel pharmacist’s son, dressed in his Sunday best; Johnny’s father is a rough, working-class sheep herder, always with the odour of animals clinging to him. Each year, over three hundred bird species visit their village, which intersects a major migratory flyway.
The two boys’ stories converge when Jean enters a bird-calling contest. He places second, and at only eleven years old becomes a child celebrity on the bird-calling circuit. Then Johnny starts to compete as well. At the annual bird festival, both boys are standouts, and a long, admiring rivalry develops between them, eventually culminating in the European championships.
As they evolve as performers, the two boys’ identities become more distinct: Jean is soft-spoken, while Johnny likes to play to the crowd. While most of their competitors are adult men, hunters who learned to call birds for sport, the two boys are fascinated with the pure beauty of birdsong, and in trying to transcend themselves through imitating birds. Their shared passion develops into an enduring partnership as performers, and they go on to tour the world in concert as the Bird Singers.
This is a story as much about friendship as it is about birdsong. The setting is timeless and bucolic, with long walks to small village schools, games of pick-up football, and father-son birding trips. The chapters, which bounce back and forth between the two narrators, are woven through with descriptions of colourful characters in the bird-calling competition circuit and the kind of ornithological detail that can only come from a true passion for birds. There is poetry in the description of the different birds, from common seagulls to thrushes and bluethroats and nightingales, and something like communion in the way Jean and Johnny understand the feathered friends they imitate.
Unique, evocative, and cinematic, The Bird Singers is the story of an unlikely friendship, sparked by a desire to speak with the avian world.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Jean Boucault and Johnny Rasse first learned to imitate bird calls as children in northern France. Their rivalry at bird calling competitions gave way to friendship, and now to a partnership as performers. Although Boucault and Rasse are trained as a pharmacist and engineer respectively, their passion for birds led them to create a stage show under the name Les chanteurs d’oiseaux (the Bird Singers), recording an album and touring in France and internationally.
Katia Grubisic is a writer, editor, and translator whose work has appeared in various Canadian and international publications. Her collection What if red ran out was shortlisted for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and won the Gerald Lampert award for best first book. Her book translations include Martine Delvaux’s White Out, Stéphane Martelly’s Little Girl Gazelle, and Marie-Claire Blais’s final novels. Her translations of David Clerson’s first novel, Brothers, and of A Cemetery for Bees, by Alina Dumitrescu, were shortlisted for Governor General’s Awards, and her translation of Clerson’s short story collection, To See Out the Night, won the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Brook Bookstore On Demand
Napoli, NA, Italy
AbeBooks seller since October 11, 2022
Shipping rates from Italy to U.S.A.
| Item | 25 to 40 business days | 60 to 60 business days |
|---|---|---|
| First item | £ 4.60 | £ 427.03 |
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Account dedicated to Print on Demand titles. Brook Bookstore offers a wide selection of books with a continuously updated catalog and fast shipments all over the world. We hold distribution rights with all of the publishers we promote and are in continuous search of new interesting titles to propose to our customers. We are part of Brandon Group SRL (an Italian company) and all of the orders are shipped from Europe. Depending on availability orders will be picked from our different warehouses. CONTACT US If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us sending a message to our store. We have a well prepared customer service team who will be happy to assist you. Our working hours are from Monday to Friday from 9:30 to 18:30 (CET, UTC +1) so messages received during the weekends might be responded with a slight delay but we guarantee you will get back to you as soon as possible. RETURNS If you want to return your order, please submit your request through Abebooks platform. Returns requests are managed case by case by our team and always in line with Abebooks policies: AbeBooks’ Return Policy guarantees that you can return any book for a refund within 30 days, when the return is due to an error on the bookseller’s part. When the motive of the return is not due to an error of the seller it is up to Brook Bookstore to accept the return or else after studying the case. CANCELLATION You can send a cancellation request to our customer service team while the package has not yet been shipped. After that we cannot ensure we can retrieve the parcel but we suggest you to get in touch with us in order to verify the case. INVOICE You can request the invoice to be issued together with the shipment of the order or, at the latest, in the same month of the shipment. …
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Brandon Group S.R.L.
Via Vannella Gaetani 27, Brandon Group
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Brook Bookstore On Demand offers a wide selection of books with a continuously updated catalog and fast shipments all over the world. We hold distribution rights with all of the publishers we promote and are in continuous search of new interesting titles to propose to our customers. We are part of Brandon Group SRL (an Italian company) and all of the orders are shipped from Europe. Depending on availability orders will be picked from our different warehouses.
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Account dedicated to Print on Demand titles.
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