Sarah Simpson is her dad’s "Idea Girl," but right now she doesn’t have any good ideas. Nothing that will make people think she is someone special. Then she remembers something unusual going on outside her kitchen window. Two pigeons keep appearing on the ledge and pecking at the window. Sarah begins to think of them as her pigeons and names them Coo and Cuckoo. She is horrified, however, when they start to build their nest outside the neighbors’ apartment next door. How could they be so disloyal? Finally Sarah gets a big idea—one that helps her get over this catastrophe!
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was born in Anderson, Indiana, US on January 4, 1933.
Her family were strongly religious with conservative, midwestern values and most of her childhood was spent moving a lot due to her father's occupation as a salesman.
Though she grew up during the Depression and her family did not have a lot of money, Naylor stated that she never felt poor because her family owned good books. Her parents enjoyed reading stories to the children--her father would imitate the characters in Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer--and her mother read to them every evening, "almost until we were old enough to go out on dates, though we never would have admitted this to anyone."
By the time Phyllis reached fifth grade, writing books was her favorite hobby and she would rush home from school each day to write down whatever plot had been forming in her head - at sixteen her first story was published in a local church magazine.
Phyllis has written over 80 books for children and young people. One of these books, "Shiloh," was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1992, was named a Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association and was also Young Adult Choice by the International Reading Association.
Naylor gets her ideas from things that happen to her or from things she has read. "Shiloh" was inspired by a little abused dog she and her husband found. The little dog haunted her so much that she had to write a story about him to get it out of her mind.
K-3rd grade-Fascinated by the two pigeons roosting outside her family's apartment window, Sarah describes them to her classmates as her "pet pigeons." Coo and Cuckoo, however, abandon that perch for a flowerpot belonging to Sarah's new neighbors. Then a third pigeon in search of a perch threatens Coo, Cuckoo, and their babies. Always an "idea girl," Sarah devises a way to attract pigeons to her family's window ledge and resolve the pigeon wars.
Yeah1 A book for 3rd/4th grade. Part of the Simply Sarah series. The kids in the building find a pigeon nest and watch as the pigeon has eggs that eventually (with a number of crisis) hatch.