Fly Away

Children’s Book By Patricia MacLachlan, published 2014

“I write, “Wrapped in the moon.” I can’t write any more. But I know that this won’t be a rhymed poem. That is too slim for what I want to say. That is too slim for the cow.”

To be honest, I picked up this children’s book because the soft watercolor image on the cover spoke of a gentler book, a gentler time. That’s precisely what I found. Reading Fly Away was somewhat like stepping into a child’s dream, an ordinary child, living an ordinary life, with the heart and soul of a poet. The children’s book sings to us, draws small vignettes of a family, evokes one small possible crisis, and then ends with bigness. The bigness of a child being recognized for her talents.

There are not many books like this, I imagine, in today’s world of children’s literature. A children’s book whose only purpose is to sing the songs of cows, family, love, silences, is so rare. I’ve never read the author’s well-known children’s book, Sarah, Plain and Tall, but I imagine now what it might be like. Just a gentle rolling through the terrain of the insides of a child’s world. The setting is timeless – I still have no idea when it supposedly takes place. It reminds me of what I learned as a Waldorf teacher, in telling a story to children, “When did it happen? When did it not happen! It is happening still.”

I hope you have access to a child to whom you might read this lovely book. It can certainly be read by independent readers (8 or 9). Yet it is a delicious book to read aloud to emerging readers, 7 to 9.)

(Note: There is another book with the same title by a different author. Be sure to check the author’s name.)

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