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(The Times, Magnus Linklater 29/06/05)
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A Head Full of Birds
by Alexandra Garibal
Age Range: 6-8
School can be a very lonely place for a girl with birds fluttering in her head and some of the children are nasty and bully her because they don’t understand.
One day Nanette meets a boy named Noah who likes to make paper planes. At first, he ignores Nanette but gradually he begins to appreciate how she interacts with everything around her, whether by dropping some brightly coloured paper boats into the gutter or taking off her boots to splash about in the rain in the schoolyard. Perhaps they can reimagine the world together.
This is an unusual story centred around a growing friendship between two children, one of whom is neurodivergent, and the other neurotypical written by French author Alexandra Garibel and translated by Vineet Lal. Despite the fact there are textual clues showing Nanette as having several autistic traits it does not explicitly label her as being on the autistic spectrum. It also makes clear in the text in the blurb at the back of the book that the story is about a “neurodiverse friendship”.
While A Head Full of Birds portrays a positive message of Nanette and Noah’s growing friendship the story might be seen as unwittingly highlighting Nanette’s ‘difference’, especially when it leads to the cruel taunting and bullying from the other children. However, the story does demonstrate that Noah is able to look beyond this and appreciate Nanette for who she is and the soft coloured-pencil illustrations by artist Sybylle Delacroix focus the readers’ eye on Nanette opening up her world.