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Book Review by Mary Beth Ross for Adkins Arboretum
Adkins Arboretum’s Book Club began with four members over twenty years ago. The Club meets on the third Tuesday of every other month at the Arboretum’s Visitor’s Center. Participants must be Arboretum members. Visit www.adkinsarboretum.org for details. Please join us!
Upon opening Amy Tan’s newest book, I immediately notice the feel of the thick and luxurious paper containing remarkable bird sketches with her handwritten observations. Unlike her previous novels, The Joy Luck Club and Kitchen God's Wife involving fictional relationships and home, this work revolves around the real behaviors between characters sporting feathers, many of whom leave for half the year. Amy joined a drawing and nature journaling class at the age of 64 as an antidote to depression over political turmoil. Backyard Bird Chronicles was excerpted from nine journals documenting bird observations in her own backyard made during 2017-2022.
Amy was lucky to have wonderful mentors such as Bernd Heinrich, John Muir Laws, and Fiona Gilloglya, a precocious 13 year old naturalist, who answered her questions, urged her to “feel the life within the bird”, and most importantly to never stop asking why, why, why.
This book is a record of Amy Tan’s growth as an artist and keen nature observer, Her backyard bistro of live mealworms, spicy suet, seeds with a dash of cayenne – along with refreshing terracotta saucer spa baths – entice birds (and undesirable rats and squirrels) to hang out on her veranda. While she adjusted the menu and altered feeding stations to keep unwanted visitors at bay, the birds surprised and delighted her with their antics. These journals were never meant for publication, freeing her from perfecting the drawings and script. Her unguarded observations are filled with heartache for dying birds, humor over the antics of fledgings, and above all asking why, why, and more whys.
The Backyard Bird Chronicles remind us that life’s sweetest pleasures are out our own back door.
