Classroom Connections: Birdy by N. West Moss
First-time novelist Moss’ nuanced portrayal of mourning, paired with richly drawn characters, creates a deeply affecting read….This resonant story celebrates the healing power of connection and the hope found in chosen family.
—Booklist, starred review
Moss does an excellent job of bringing the readers into the protagonist’s thoughts … an emotionally complex portrait of a tween at a turning point in her life, offering readers a cathartic and engrossing narrative experience.
—The Horn Book
A grieving tween plans for the worst in this emotionally raw upper middle grade debut…Sensitive language addresses the myriad challenges the protagonist faces, making her efforts to traverse processes of bereavement and change both understandable and heartbreaking.
—Publishers Weekly
Moss presents a gorgeously imperfect narrator who, after years of being a caretaker, must learn to be a kid and a member of a family with loving adults. The messiness of grief is handled with delicacy and compassion, especially in Birdy’s feelings of relief when she no longer has to deal with her mother’s illness, despite loving and missing her terribly.
―The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
Please tell us about Birdy.
When the book opens, Birdy and her little brother Mouse are on a train, heading out from their home in New York City to a rural town in Upstate New York called Malone. Their mother has recently died and they are setting off on a whole new life. Birdy is worried and guarded, while Mouse is more open-hearted. The book is about the new life that they build for themselves, along with the people – and animals – who become their new family.
Could you share a few interesting tidbits about your writing process with this book?
My grandfather on my mother’s side was a writer. In fact, he was a speechwriter for President Hoover back in 1930 and 1931. Sadly, I never got to meet him. In an effort to know him better, I set much of the book in Malone, New York, where my grandfather grew up. Setting the book in Malone meant that I’d given myself an excuse to walk along the streets and see the beautiful natural setting that he had experienced when he was a little boy on the farm. When he grew up, he moved to the “Big City” to become a professional writer.
What topics does your book touch upon that would make it a perfect fit for the classroom?
Birdy is given a diary as a gift, which she comes to love. When she is upset or worried or angry, she turns to her diary to express herself in a safe, private space. Keeping a diary has all sorts of benefits including reducing anxiety, increasing creativity, helping kids deal with complicated feelings, and so much more. In addition to writing Birdy, I hold a degree in Education as well as an MFA in Fiction Writing, and I teach writing and literature at the college level, which means that I have love working with students and have experience with it.
Additionally, Birdy is about the power and satisfactions from “found family” and about the healing power of the natural world. These are all subjects kids, and adults, can use to help make meaning in their own lives.
Both Birdy and Mouse have nicknames, and I love the power that nicknames have. It’s the one way that we have of naming ourselves. I go by my middle name, which was my grandmother’s maiden name. I love talking to kids about what nickname they might come up with for themselves, if they could choose their own names.
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N. West Moss is author of BIRDY, a middle grade novel coming from Christy Ottaviano Books at Little, Brown. She is also the author of FLESH & BLOOD: Reflections on Infertility, Family, and Creating a Bountiful Life, published by Algonquin (October 2021). Her work has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, The Saturday Evening Post, Salon, Brevity, The Blotter, and many other fine publications. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, and has won The Saturday Evening Post’s Great American Fiction Contest, as well as the Diana Woods Memorial Prize for Creative Nonfiction. Her work was also awarded three Faulkner-Wisdom gold medals for essay, short story, and memoir. Her first book, THE SUBWAY STOPS AT BRYANT PARK, was published by Leapfrog Press in 2017. She is a fellow at: MacDowell, Art Omi, VCCA- the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Hawthornden Castle in Scotland. She was the 2023 Writer-in-Residence at Gladstone’s Library in Wales. You can find her online at www.nwestmoss.com.