(++++) BIRD BRAINS

Stinkbird Has a Superpower. By Jill Esbaum. Illustrated by Bob Shea. Putnam. $18.99.

Be the Bus: The Lost & Profound Wisdom of The Pigeon. By Mo Willems. Union Square & Co. $15.99.

     Whether they are cartoony with factual underpinnings or cartoony with no element of reality whatsoever, birds can be a highly attractive element of children’s books – and, for that matter, of certain sorts of books aimed at adults. Stinkbird Has a Superpower is a delightful introduction to the decidedly peculiar hoatzin – said in the book to be pronounced WHOT-sin, but more often spoken as HOAT-zin, pretty much as it is spelled. This bird of the Amazon rainforest is called the “stinkbird” because its digestive mechanism leads to it having a strong and off-putting smell of poop – which, however, does not stop people from eating it on occasion. That is a fact not mentioned in Jill Esbaum’s book, in which the cartoon-hoatzin narrator directly says, “No creature wants to eat me.” Bob Shea’s illustrations, like Esbaum’s words, do all they can to make the hoatzin both interesting and, pictorially, adorable: the idea of the book is that a father hoatzin is talking to his gigantic-eyed son about the mysterious superpower that hoatzins have, which is not their smell. The superpower is the ability, when young, to climb up to their nest when they fall or jump out of it – and they do jump, into the river below the branches where hoatzin nests are built, because baby hoatzins (unlike the smelly adults) are food for numerous Amazonian predators if those snakes, monkeys, and raptors can catch them. The baby hoatzins, unprotected when the adults are away from the nest, instinctively fall into the water and swim to a stick or root until it is safe to emerge. Then they crawl out of the river and use the claws on their wings to help them climb back to the nest. Only hoatzin chicks have these wing claws – they disappear as the birds age, and no other extant species has them at all. Esbaum’s helpful narrative and Shea’s pleasant illustrations make a fine combination for exploring some basics about hoatzins, including their climbing ability when they are very young and cannot yet fly (they learn how to do that when about two months old). And there is a back-of-the-book page with a few additional facts about hoatzins, suitably checked by a research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Oddly, that page is a bit less than 100% accurate: for instance, it emphatically states that “the hoatzin is the only bird that eats nothing but leaves,” but in fact the hoatzin does include some fruit and flowers in its diet. Also, Esbaum misses an opportunity by failing to point out that it is not only the wing claws that let infant hoatzins climb: they also have oversize feet, which Shea’s illustrations do not show. These are minor nitpicks, though, with Stinkbird Has a Superpower being, as a whole, an amusingly presented, well-written and well-illustrated introduction to an unusual bird, no matter how its name may be pronounced.

     At the other end of the “usualness” scale from the hoatzin is the pigeon – but there is nothing ordinary about the one created by Mo Willems 20 years ago for Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! That delightful bit of absurdity remains as coooote (sorry) as it was two decades ago – but while the original book was strictly for children (despite being found hilarious by adults), there is a new gift-size book that is intended for grown-ups. Be the Bus: The Lost & Profound Wisdom of The Pigeon features the bright blue, weird-eyed, facially expressive, thoroughly anthropomorphic bird imparting tidbits of almost-knowledge that are almost important. Well, ok, they are not important at all, but they are delivered as if they are important, in line with the usual approach of self-help books, which this one sort of is except that it isn’t. Here you will learn, with suitable pigeon drawings illustrating the words, that “dropped food is gravity’s way of sharing,” that “happiness is escaping a warm puppy,” and: “Friendship is like riding a bike. (There’s always a chance you’ll be grievously injured.)” An occasional entry calls on the basics of The Pigeon’s personality: there is a two-page spread that is all black except for The Pigeon leaning morosely against the right-hand page’s right-hand margin, with the left-hand page sporting the words, “You don’t get me.” And here and there are comments that really could come out of a non-pigeon-pervaded self-help tome: “LISTEN to your heart. FOLLOW your gut. WATCH your step.” Even in those cases, though, this is decidedly pigeon-focused thinking, as the stethoscope-wielding pigeon has a grumbling stomach and is about to step on a banana peel. Nothing about The Pigeon is to be taken seriously, of course – by adults or children. However, it is great that grown-ups now have their very own bit of pigeon-driven absurdity to go along with the equal ridiculousness of Willems’ original Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!