My Dad's a Birdman
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| David Almond, ill. Polly Dunbar |
| Walker Books |
| 1406304867 |
| Oct 2007 |
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Lizzie misses her mother, however, her dad and his quite literal flights of fancy provide plentiful diversion and distraction, as too do Auntie Doreen’s endeavours to normalise the situation that father and daughter find themselves within through her homely domesticity and the cooking of doughy dumplings!
Dad is eager to enter the human bird competition that is due to take place over the river Tyne and which has attracted international interest – ‘there’s a fella from France that’s screwed wings to his bike. There’s a lass from Japan with a ten foot pogo stick. There’s a bloke from Brazil with an umbrella on his head and a propeller on his bum…’ The archetype whereby the child’s inner-imaginative world is constructed as all-embracing is reversed by David Almond in this latest work, where it is Lizzie’s dad – and his obsession with all things fowl and flight – that drive the story and the attempts to find freedom of flight. Polly Dunbar’s vibrant illustrations make her the perfect illustrator to collaborate on this book. The building blocks of the story will feel familiar with those who have read Almond’s body of work to date, influences from William Blake continue to abound as too does a preoccupation with the human form and flight. Ultimately, however, this is an upbeat and uplifting story that transcends ideas of social norms through realising the importance of the love than underpins all of this.
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