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What Makes a Bird?: An Illustrated Guide to the Bird World by Nadeem Perera ill. Montse Galbany

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 3 Apr 2026

Publisher: Flying Eye Books
ISBN: 9781838742065

“Perera highlights both [birds’] universal characteristics (wings, beaks, feathers, two legs) and the many adaptations that have allowed them to survive in nearly every kind of habitat from oceans to cities and polar regions. Galbany follows suit with a bountiful gallery of species, all depicted in stylized but precise detail and in natural settings and attitudes but with plenty of inserted close-up views of distinctive beaks, nests, patterned feathers, and anatomical structures… 

An informative and engaging introduction to birds written by wildlife TV presenter and bird watcher, Nadeem Perera.

A richly illustrated book detailing everything that makes a bird a bird. Featuring birds from all over the world, and peppered with clear case studies on different bird species and punchy fact files on all things beaks, feathers, migration, nesting and more, the book also closes with a chapter on connecting with birds and becoming a birder.

Follow Montse Galbany—a digital illustrator and graphic designer living in Granollers, a city close to Barcelona—on

Here are more examples of the illustrator’s work:

Free as a Bird by BARROUX

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 8 Oct 2024

Waterstones
Bookshop

See also:
I Love You, Blue

One day Jonas the lighthouse keeper and his friend Blue the whale rescue a tired, bedraggled bird from the sea…a bird who has made a perilous journey from a far-off country, fleeing war and great danger.

This beautiful story of care, refuge and freedom is told and illustrated with compassion and empathy.

Barroux studied photography, art, sculpture, and architecture in France at the famous École Estienne and École Boule. He went on to work as an art director in Paris and Montreal. While in Montreal, Barroux began illustrating by creating linocut images, and he is now well known for his children’s book illustrations.

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Safe by Vanessa Harbour

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Waterstones
Amazon
Bookshop

5-Star BfK review

In the chaotic last days of World War II, Jakob and Kizzy are tricked into a life or death journey. Far from home, they are attacked and only just escape. They hide in a seemingly deserted mansion, but they keep hearing strange noises… Investigating, they find it shelters not only forty abandoned horses but a small band of lost children, displaced by the war. With danger on every side, can Kizzy and Jakob keep them safe and get them all home?

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Wall Street Journal Reviews Close To The Wind

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wallstjournalThe stories of refugees leaving North Africa in risky attempts to cross the Mediterranean, so much in the news, give a painful timeliness to the plight of a young boy and his grandfather in “Close to the Wind” (David Fickling, 290 pages, $17.99), a novel for 10- to 14-year-olds. In a bid for universality, first-time author Jon Walter has not situated his story in an obviously recognizable country—it might be Argentina, it might be anywhere—and the effect is to raise the tale of one child’s journey almost to allegory.

via Children’s Books: One Child’s Journey – WSJ.