Krishna Bala Shenoi’s artwork is stunning. From the black-headed stork to the green pigeon, the pelican to the doves – the illustrations leap off the pages making The Golden Eagle a visual treat.
But of course, I choose books based on the story, not just the pictures, and The Golden Eagle is a pacy, exciting read.
The white-headed squirrel Shikar has questions. Who were his parents? How did he make friends with the birds? Why did Kabul the bulbul become a mother-figure to him, and why are Lovey and Dovey like his aunt and uncle? The two doves, Lovey and Dovey, set out to tell him his story. It’s a long story, full of twists and turns, a story about Regal the golden eagle.
I loved The Golden Eagle. Suspense, drama and beautiful characters make it a pacy read, sucking us into a book that full of politics, intrigue and betrayal.
Suspense Writing
Writers can be plotters or pantsers, and I’m very much a pantser when it comes to my first draft. I like to see where the story takes me before going back to rewrite it to add foreshadowing and clues for the reader. And yes, that’s the crux of it – if you don’t plot your story, you need to go back and rewrite it.
With The Golden Eagle, I’d love to discuss what the readers are led to believe. What clues does the author give us? What do we feel about the characters? Is Mike the shrike suspicious? How about Chorus the thrush? And Teen the green pigeon? Pecan the pelican?
In a book with so many powerful characters, a discussion of this sort can lead to a wonderful activity on creating suspense in stories of our own!
Anthropomorphism
What makes anthropomorphism believable or not? Unlike in The Paradise Flycatcher, the human Mitalee has no role to play in The Golden Eagle. The whole story is about the birds. Does this make the tale more or less believable?
Animal stories were a childhood favourite of mine and I believe that children are drawn to animal stories because there’s magic in the relationships between animals and humans. Let’s see how we can create animal stories of our own!
Playing with Words
I love the number of bird idioms Deepak Dalal uses through the book! ‘Free as a bird’ forms the core of The Golden Eagle, but there’s so much more. Regal watches the bird kingdom with eagle eye. The doves eat like birds; they’re mocked for being bird-brained; some birds wing it because they don’t know what lies ahead. We’ll do activities around these phrases and see whether we can do written exercises that explore idioms based on a subject. I’m sure it’ll be fun!
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We’ve read The Golden Eagle before at my book club–three years ago! I wrote about it too; take a look!
We’ve also read all the others in the Feather Tales series:
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