A Swift Return

by Fiona Barker, Howard Gray (illustrator)

Aria has her head in the clouds. Yusuf keeps his feet on the ground. But when they work together to save a bird who has lost her way, something magical happens. When Swift loses her way on her epic migration. Aria and Yusuf come to her rescue and are inspired to think big about looking after the sky above their city. Inspired by Fiona and Howard’s love for wildlife of all kinds, A Swift Return is the follow-up to Setsuko and the Song of the Sea. Howard’s beautiful illustrations evoke a strong sense of place, strengthened by the beautiful Arabic text distilled by Maysoon AbuBlan.

Genres: Picture Books

Paperback

Reviews

[PagesAndInk · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Swift Return by Fiona Barker and illustrated by Howard Gray is such a beautiful evocative and poetically written children’s book. Its so perfect for a parent to read to their young child, with the gorgeous illustrations and the simple nicely flowing prose.

Its a story all about two young children, Aria and Yusuf who rescue an exhausted and weak swift and slowly nurse it back to health. Its a really wonderful, simple read.That I couldn’t recommend highly enough for anybody who has a young child and who wants to spend a little time with them, helping them read and teaching them a little about nature at the same time. Thank you so much to Tiny Tree Books and the write reads for my copy.

[StephReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Swift Return is a really beautiful children's picture book about two young children who find an injured bird and nurse it back to health. It's perfect for young children who are just learning to read and would work well with a parent reading it alongside them. The illustrations throughout are beautiful, each page has a line or so of text and then is one big picture showing what is happening. Its super short and can be read in 5 minutes but stays with you a lot longer.

[ReadItRichard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Swift Return is a beautifully illustrated children's book about two young children who find an exhausted Swift and nurse it back to health. The writing is very simple and easy for even a young child to manage, and really its the perfect book for early readers, where their parents can help them read the words or read them to them. The artwork is truly beautiful and evocative.

The book is super short, too short really, I was wishing there was more! But I think this is fairly standard length for picture books for children of this age.

Really wonderful book. Highly recommended and I'd like to thank the write reads and tiny tree books for bringing it to my attention.

[Theartsyreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Swift Return is a wonderful picture book with beautiful illustrations and text that is written both in English as well as Arabic. I felt the Arabic text is portrayed so softly that it almost flows into the illustration, which I found was really nicely done.

In the story, we are following Aria and Yusuf on their way to becoming friends while helping an injured swift. I think the idea behind this, their growing friendship and how they work together and the swift becomes healthier and stronger as their friendship grows, is really beautiful.

Now, you could just quickly leaf through the pages and be done with it in a few minutes. However, I have learned that in most cases, picture books are very deep, contrary to what you might expect from a book of 32 pages and with such little text. But when you read between the lines, when you combine what you see with what you read, then you realise there is actually so much more to it than meets the eye.

That is why I felt at that in a way there is a bit of a missed opportunity in here. We can see Aria and Yusuf working together in the streets, him building things and her watering the plants, and then, after the streets were so dusty and full of smoke at first, suddenly the “city bloomed green and yellow with patches of sparkling blue. Insects buzzed and the air was clear.”

While I love that the grey, hazy, misty city changed into such a beautiful concoction of greens and blues in the end, I felt this ending came about very abruptly, and I felt addressing the actual problems and what Aria and Yusuf did to change them would have been very powerful and given all the more opportunity to discuss these societal issues while reading the book with children. I know that discussing the book and answering questions that may arise is the adult’s responsibility when reading this (or other) books with very young children, but I still feel these issues could have addressed a little better.

How exactly are they helping the swift? What exactly are they doing to change the city? What little changes could readers incorporate into their lives in order to make a change too? At the same time, I also felt that the two characters might reinforce stereotypes a little. Yusuf is good with his tools and can fix and build things, while Aria is the softer, more artistic one who thinks of stories and tends to flowers. I normally don’t mind these things too much, and I know not every (picture) book has to challenge stereotypes; it is just something that crossed my mind.

All in all I really liked this thought-provoking and very beautifully illustrated picture book.

4 stars from me!

For my full review please head over to my blog:

https://theartsyreader.com/picture-bo...

[A Voracious Reader (a.k.a. Carol) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book source ~ TWR Book Tour

Aria and Yusuf help a swift recover and become friends in the process.

This is a beautifully illustrated book with a wonderful story. Helping something helpless brings two strangers together and they become friends who go to school each morning and explore the city after. They help the swift take flight once again and gain a wonderful friendship with shared interests.

[Lauren Griffiths · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book with my 4 year old son, Elliot. When I asked him what he liked about the book he said:

“I like the bird it was sad. If I seen a bird falling from the sky I would want to help it too but I’ve never seen a bird falling out of the sky before”.

As a parent, reading this book spurred a conversation about why it is important to help look after our environment and what could happen to animals and insects if we don’t. We also spoke about how sometimes people, or animals can loose their way in life and how it is important that we are always kind and help each other to get back on track when things go in the wrong direction.

A lovely heart warming and educational story for young children, highly recommend!

[karla_bookishlife · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely beautiful dual language story about friendship, nature and wildlife, kindness, and looking after our environment. A Swift Return is written by Fiona Barker with Arabic text by Maysoon AbuBlan and illustrations by Howard Gray. Aria, a young girl, lives high in an apartment gazing on the sky, whilst a young boy, Yusuf, plays below. Both are united when a young Swift they notice flying through the sky falls injured to the ground. Their united concern and kindness towards the little Swift brings them together to help it, and it also kindles their friendship. The smog in the city has reduced the amount of insects and birds, so the pair create little green spaces to help encourage plant and animal life back and to create patches of cleaner air for all. Their small changes make a big difference to the visual beauty of their environment, as well as to its improvement. This is such a simple tale that brings a lovely message without preaching. The illustrations are so pretty and engaging. With thanks to Tiny Tree books for the gorgeous review copy. #aswiftreturn #fionabarker #Howardgray #tinytree

[Mani · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Swift Return is not only a heart-warming and thought-provoking book but an educational one too. It subtly covers the importance of looking after the environment as well as teaching young readers about friendship and helping each other.

There are some parts of the story where I felt it could have gone into more detail but it is aimed at younger readers so it works.

The book is full of lovely illustrations that help tell the story, which is great for younger readers as even if theyr don’t understand the story written story they can still follow along and even make their own up using the illustrations.

I love seeing children’s books that have translations of the story in different languages, they make books so much more accessible, especially to those who can’t read English. This one is translated in Arabic. I can’t read Arabic but I did show it to a friend who was very impressed, she informed me that it was very accurately translated.

One thing we both agreed on was that the Arabic text was a little difficult to see in places as the colour of the font was too similar to the background and on certain pages you could just about see the translation, so maybe a darker font colour that is consistent throughout the book would work better.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of my performance management at work is to keep up to date with books for EAL children, these are children whose English is a second or third language. This is a book written in English and below the English writing it has been translated into Arabic.

So when this was released I was extremely interested and I decided to enlist the help of an Arabic speaking child from school to help.

Aria has her head in the clouds. Yusuf keeps his feet on the ground. But when they work together to save a bird who has lost her way, something magical happens. When Swift loses her way on her epic migration. Aria and Yusuf come to her rescue and are inspired to think big about looking after the sky above their city..

Child L is in year 4 and at home he speaks Arabic. I asked him to read this book and to give me his opinion.
I took this book home with me one night and as a family we read this together. We loved reading this in Arabic as well as English. The story was a good story. It was great that this is in a dual language.
This is such a beautiful story about two young children who when they discover a young injured bird they decide to nurse it back to health.
It is lovely to see a positive story about young children, and the good they can do.
Though this is a short picture book, the message it sends will stay with you.
The illustrations are brilliantly done.
This book has so many important messages such as friendship and helping the environment.
A massive thank you to The Write Reads for my spot on the blog tour.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fortunate to be sent a copy of the book as part of The Write Reads Blog Tour.

This is a lovely picture book about a swift that falls from the sky because the pollution is choking it. The swift is found by two children, Aria and Yusuf, who nurse the bird and help it return to its migration.

The story is about friendship, nature and looking after our environment. The children start to look for ways to make their neighbourhood better, planting flowers in unused spaces, which helps to improve the air quality and make the skies blue again.

There is a strong message of hope and that small changes can make a big difference to our local environments and the world. It shows even the youngest children that they can have an impact.

The illustrations are also beautiful. They provide lots of opportunity to develop discussion and conversations with younger children. There is lovely Arabic writing included too, which adds to the special quality of the book.

This is a lovely read for all ages. My 12 year old also read it and thought it was lovely and it prompted her to talk about the environment and how we can all make the spaces around us better.

A huge thank you to the author, illustrator and publisher for my advance copy and to The Write Reads for including me in their blog tour.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a copy of this for free, to review for a tour with The Write Reads.

This was a delightful children's book with an important message. In this story, two children named Aria and Yusuf find an injured bird, which they try to nurse back to full health. It may sound as though it could be quite a saddening story, but while I was reading it, I felt joyful, and it was uplifting to read.

Like many children's books, I felt it had the kind of magic that enabled adults to connect with it just as easily as children. Reading the story, I felt a kind of renewed appreciation for nature and wildlife, and its beauty. I thought about how it might feel to be a bird, soaring through the sky, and to be free in that way. That freedom should never be taken away, and this beautifully written story, with its cute and colourful illustrations, delivers a message about how important it is to take care of our wildlife.

Thank you to The Write Reads, Tiny Tree Books, and to the author and illustrator, for the opportunity to read and review this.

[Emma book blogger Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Swift Return is a children genre about environment and nature. . The illustrations are beautiful and really work with the story. The story is about Aria who is in her own world and Yusuf has his feet firmly on the ground. They both have to work together to save a bird who is lost and something magical happens. This is a beautiful story and is written well. I feel children will love reading this with their parents. A swift return is heart-warming to read that will educate children about birds, what to do to help them. The words are written in English, but I like how there is Arabic below. It's good for children to see a different language written down. This is an entertaining read that children will love. 5 stars.Thank you @The_WriteReads/@WriteReadsTours for letting me be part of this tour and reviewing this book.

[ReadingPages · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Swift Return by Fiona Barker is a lovely story packed with beautiful illustrations by Howard Gray. I read it along with my young daughter and she really loved it. The two young children are introduced very skilfully and shown to be different yet the same. Each page only contains about a single sentence and being a book for young children it is under 30 pages long so you can literally read it in a couple of minutes. But it is likely you may have to read it a second time. Its also really great as your child can easily see what you are reading and start reading alongside you or even take over and read to you. Which is lovely. Big thanks to TWR and Tiny tree for this book!

[Bookread2day · Rating 5 out of 5]

Today I’m giving a big shout out to one of my favourite children’s books. A Swift Return, is a really lovely written children’s book that is written in English and underneath in Arabic, with the most beautiful illustrations.

This wonderful story is about finding friendship, and them both caring for a Swift that has fallen from the sky injured. In the real-life however if you find a bird who is injured or sick it is very important to find a wildlife expert, who will know how to look after the bird safely.

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has such beautiful big pictures with wonderful perspectives, views from the sky and the ground and in between. There's so much empathy in the children's expressions. I loved how helping the swift made them friends, then they worked to helped make the city a nicer place for everyone, including the wildlife.

[David Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a lovely story that captures the heart with its words and pictures. Just like the eponymous bird, it spans countries and even crosses language barriers. The important message about pollution is not preachy and doesn't get in the way of the narrative arc. Wonderful

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to follow.