Starbird

A fabled bird uses song to weave “the most magical dreams” in this freedom-focused fairy tale. The story opens with injustice, when the lavender-skinned Moon King captures Starbird as a gift for his newborn daughter. As the pale-skinned girl grows, she perceives “a sadness coloring Starbird’s voice” and releases him, sparking her father’s rage. “How could his beloved daughter reject the gift he had risked so much to bring her?” With the Moon King in hot pursuit, Starbird flees to the jungle, the ocean, the desert, and the mountains. In intricate multimedia spreads with collage and stamp textures, King-Chai shows Starbird navigating ethereal landscapes; in one scene, midnight-black shapes creepily resolve into animal silhouettes among periwinkle mushrooms and blue ferns. Starbird’s desperate wildness, the Moon King’s stubbornness, and the princess’s compassion mingle in this folkloric fare that ends with unresolved questions about Starbird’s fate. Ages 3–7. (Sept.)