Reviews of A Surprisingly Fluffy Bird

We read the story of Algy to our 4-year-old. It needed a few explanations in parts, and it needed to be serialised as it was too much for one sitting, but she was genuinely gripped by it, and wasn’t interested in being read any other story until we’d finished this one. The chapters are a good helping for a bedtime story. I’m confident that in a few years’ time she’ll go back and read it herself as well, and I’d encourage her to do so.

It’s not your conventional children’s story, to put it mildly. From page one, Algy is a lost, stranded, endangered bird, scared and confused. He meets a variety of creatures, mostly birds, some friendly, some not so friendly, and all well-observed renditions of common birds of the Western Isles- well, apart from the fact that real birds can’t speak English, but otherwise you know what I mean. There’s quite a macabre feel of hopelessness about it at some points, there are several points of genuine peril, and it’s even debatable as to whether it’s got a happy ending or not.

There’s a strong thread of traditional oral storytelling running through the core of the story. At one point Algy effectively pays his way with a song, his own ballad of how he came to be stranded in a strange place (the prose turns into poetry for several pages at this stage). You can easily picture a good folk singer giving the story some real welly at this point.

In keeping with the oral storytelling, sound plays a big part in the story- and in the reading of the story. The sound of the sea is ever-present, and is good fun to read out loud. The cormorants and the seagulls all have dialogue clearly written with their proper bird calls in mind, so if you are reading it out loud, it can become a real impressions-of-birds performance piece.

On an adult level the story is also a love song to the coast of the Western Isles. The carefully observed and well-evoked atmosphere of the cold, barren yet beautiful coastline is sure to make anybody who grew up somewhere like that feel a twinge of homesickness (unless of course they hated living there…).

According to the blurb, Algy was a puppet and a Tumblr star first before getting his story told in print, and unusually, the one thing that our daughter didn’t get so interested in is Algy the puppet, who image crops up once per chapter. Somehow the look of the puppet feels slightly disconnected to the character of Algy in the story. The puppet feels like a distant cousin of CBBC’s Ed The Duck or Gordon The Gopher, quite cartoon-like and a bit silly, whereas the story is full of realistic-looking birds in a real environment. It’s a strange point to make really but there you go.

As kids stories go, it was great to read something that felt so traditional and sincere. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for any further adventures.

A beautifully written book suitable to be read as a bedtime story to little ones or on their own by older children. Had to read it myself before giving to my granddaughter and have since bought more copies for other young members of the family. Can't recommend it highly enough- it deserves to become a modern day classic. Look forward to the sequel.

Seriously. This is a great book. Algy has quite the imagination. You should follow Algy on Tumblr.

"This is one of my favourite books. I liked how there were so many interesting animals, and I liked how they talked. It made me feel adventurous when I read it!" Grayson Chapin, age 7