A Warbler’s Journey

This painterly picture book traces the migration of a single yellow warbler, “the color of a ripe lemon,” from the tropical forests of Nicaragua to the far reaches of subarctic Canada, offering glimpses of three children who spot it along the way. Lane’s naturalistic art visualizes the journey over land and sea as the fowl flies through the night among other migrating birds. In Nicaragua, a brown-skinned grandfather tells a grandchild that people call the bird reinita amarilla: “They eat the insects that hurt our coffee trees,” Weidensaul writes. In Florida, a Black elder introduces the bird as a yellow warbler: “She must have just arrived, flying all the way from Mexico across the ocean. Imagine that!” And in the Northwest Territories (per back matter), an Indigenous child who encounters the bird knows another word for her: iyesaze. It’s a lushly wrought look at knowledge both intergenerational and regional—and how that knowledge connects people across time and place. Back matter offers suggestions for helping migratory birds. Ages 5–8. (May)