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Swordbird
Author: Nancy Yi Fan
Illustrator: Mark Zug
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN; 10: 0-06-113099-0
?ISBN; 13: 978-0-06-113099-1
“Twelve-year-old author Nancy Yi Fan has woven a captivating tale about the birds of Stone-Run Forest and the heroism, courage, and resourcefulness in their quest for peace.” …from the front-jacket flap blurb.
Virtually all the publicity for SWORDBIRD emphasizes that Fan, born in China in 1993 and a resident in the U.S. since she was seven years old, was only twelve when she wrote and sold this novel.
It probably should not be surprising that SWORDBIRD is disappointing. It would surely have been rejected if an older person had written it. Only curiosity to see what a novel by a twelve-year-old author is like gives it its sales appeal. It is not bad, just terribly mediocre and derivative. It is a straight rehash of the most standard high-fantasy plot stereotypes, especially those in Jacques’ REDWALL novels, with no depth and little originality. It is almost certainly a better novel than any of us could have written at twelve years old, and it marks Fan as a promising author to look forward to in another ten or fifteen years.
The Sunrise tribe (cardinals) and the Bluewingle tribe (blue jays) have been friendly neighbors for generations. But when the eggs of each tribe begin disappearing, each assumes the other is to blame. The real villain is the evil hawk Turnatt, who has assembled an army of crows and ravens to secretly steal the cardinals’ and blue jays’ eggs to turn them against each other.
“Slime-beak, Turnatt’s captain, was hopping about, glancing at the trees bordering the half-built fortress. He dreaded Turnatt, for he worried about being made into a scapegoat.
Displeased, Turnatt stared down his beak at his nervous captain. His bright eye burning a hole into the bothersome crow’s face.
‘Stop hopping, Slimey – you’re getting on my nerves. I’ll demote you if you keep on doing that.’ A fish scale hung from the edge of Turnatt’s beak.
Slime-beak shivered like a leaf, partly because of fear and partly because of the hawk’s bad breath.”
Slime-beak leads a slavecatching attack against all the woodbirds while they are gathered together being entertained by the comical Willowleaf Theater troupe (Alexandra the hummingbird, Kastin the titmouse, Mayflower the junco, Dilby the loon, Parrale the wood duck, and Lorpil the gannett) at the Bright Moon Festival to celebrate the birth of mystical Swordbird. Though they are taken completely by surprise, the woodbirds rally and defeat the bad birds with ridiculous ease.
Despite monumental incompetence by the evil birds, the good birds must still send brave Miltin the robin and Aska the blue jay on an epic quest and solve an ancient riddle. This is necessary to summon mighty Swordbird to finally defeat Turnatt — but really just to incorporate these basic stereotypes of high fantasy into the story.
To be fair, Swordbird is recommended for readers aged 8 to 12, so it does not pretend to be for older readers. This could be an enjoyable book for juveniles too young for REDWALL. Or, emphasizing the author’s age, this might be used to encourage elementary school seniors to try writing for themselves.
