Beautiful Blackbird by Ashley Bryan

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Title: Beautiful Blackbird
Genre: Fiction
Author/Illustrator: Ashley Bryan
Major Awards: Coretta Scott King Award
Age group: 2rd-4th

Summary
This story is about the Blackbird and how beautiful and wonderful he is.  All the other birds are so colorful like the rainbow however when questioned which of the birds is the most beautiful of them all they all shout and sing that Blackbird is the most beautiful.  He is the only black bird and no one else has the any marks of black at all.  So the Ringdove asks the blackbird to paint him a black ring around his neck and the blackbird mixes up his brew in the medicine gourd and the next morning paints a ring around the ringdoves neck.  After seeing how beautiful the ringdove now looks every other bird begs to be painted with a black embellishment.  The black bird brew up an even bigger brew and the next morning happily obliges to paint and mark all the other birds.  All the birds cannot believe their beauty after they have the black markings and the blackbird paints every last one of them with a pattern in black.
Evaluation
I believe this story has a deeper meaning than the plain face story a child is likely to see.  The message behind it and the fact that the black bird says that "even after this I'll still be me and you'll still be you" is a wonderful theme that children should learn.  I think this may be interesting to incorporate into a middle school environment as an introduction to reading the bigger picture or the overall theme that the author is really trying to convey.

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