Review of the Day: A Terrible Place for a Nest by Sara Levine, ill. Erika Meza
I don’t like to brag, but stupid birds and the horrendous places that they decide to make their nests are kinda my specialty. Not simply because I, like a lot of homeowners, have had to deal with robins putting nests in downright stupid locations (robins are apparently somewhat infamous for this) but also because at my library where I work I have a roosting pair of peregrine falcons. I have watched these birds, time and again, pick lamentably, laughably, horrendously bad places for nests. And yet, it would never occur to me in a million years to make a book as brilliant as what Sara Levine has concocted in A Terrible Place for a Nest. Linking the birds’ choices with humans who have few housing choices of their own, the book deals with its metaphors honestly. It never panders to kids, allowing them to draw their own conclusions about what it truly means when its young hero says, “I told you it was a bad place for a nest!” As heartrending as it is heartening.
“When Juno and his mom lost their home, they had to move to a new place.” Juno is a small child and his mother a calm capable woman. We do not learn the reasons for this move but we do know that Juno is not a fan. He’s scared of his room, the grocery store doesn’t carry his cereal, and he thinks the other kids at school won’t talk to him. When a pair of mourning doves build a nest on the family’s gate, some movers accidentally topple it, destroying the eggs inside. Juno is distraught but soon becomes determined to do right by the birds. And when they do build again, he and a new friend are there to put up signs and do whatever it takes to make that “terrible” place for a nest a place that’s safe for babies anyway.
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So Sara Levine has, until this point, primarily been known as a nonfiction author for kids. Though she has a fair number of books to her name, do yourself a favor and find her Flower Talk first. Eye-opening doesn’t even begin to touch upon it. The bookflap of this title says that she was inspired to write A Terrible Place for a Nest, “by a pair of mourning doves who did, in fact, build their nest in an inconvenient location.” This makes me wonder if this book was initially envisioned as nonfiction. You could do that, sure, but by adding a pair of human characters who have their own problems to deal with, you give the book a weight and depth it might otherwise have lacked. I should also point out that at no point does the book ever try to make it seem like Juno and his mom aren’t anything but devastated by what happened to them. They aren’t defeated by it, but this isn’t a gosh-didn’t-they-end-up-in-a-better-place-so-I-guess-it-was-all-for-the-best kind of story either. We start the story with a loss, and then from there we move on to a second loss (that of the nest). That’s a bit risky in a book for young children, but notice that almost immediately Juno and his Mama become proactive. They try to rebuild the old nest. They research what the doves prefer to eat. And most interestingly, when the doves lay eggs in a new nest, it’s in the exact same location as the last time. It would have been infinitely easy for the author to clarify that the new nest is in a better spot. By not doing that, she opens up a world of discussion that a teacher or parent might have with a kid or students.
To be clear, Erika Meza could illustrate my library’s bylaws and I’d be enthralled from start to finish. So far she has only illustrated a couple of picture books that have been released in the States (my personal favorite was To the Other Side) but no matter the frequency, I always look for her work. Just to give you a sense of her talents, examine what Meza is doing in this book with color. The colors at the beginning are all greyed out earth tones. Browns and gray blues. As Juno begins to acclimate, however, everything begins to brighten. Have a kid try to spot that first bit of bright yellow and what’s happening when it comes. It’s so subtle you won’t notice it consciously, but the gradual brightening has a visceral effect on the reader. And then on top of all of that is Meza’s exquisite character work. I always thought it fascinating that she worked on a book like To the Other Side where the character’s eyes are hidden for most of the story. Meza does human eyes better than anyone. You peer directly into the souls of the people on the page when she wants you to. I pray she never illustrates a villain. I suspect that if she wanted to, she could instill nightmares with this power.
There are also moments in the art that look, on first glance, like accidents but are clearly meant to be intentional. So the publication page of a picture book is often the place to look to figure out how the art was made. Sometimes the information there can be quite cheeky or original. Sometimes, it gives you bupkiss. And I am sorry to report that A Terrible Place for a Nest falls squarely into the bupkiss category. Even so, read this book enough times and it’s like Meza has hidden little clues for you. That same publication page is printed on a ripped piece of carboard, a box, a newspaper, and a letter written in Spanish on graph paper. Next, as I read through the book, I saw each one of these elements appear, however lightly, in the backgrounds. For example, when the nest has been destroyed and eggs have cracked, look at the ground behind Juno and his Mama. You can see the barest words from that letter (“tu Madre” is particularly clear). Later, when Juno has researched what mourning doves like to eat and has found some millet, the cobblestones reflect the numbers that might appear on a box of some sort.
Displacement is, sadly, not a strange concept for a great many kids. In her own backflap, it writes that Meza, “grew up in Mexico and moved houses more often than she had birthdays.” There are a great many picture books that tackle forced immigration, refugees, and those that must flee their home for big reasons like violence or famine. There are significantly less picture books on the mundanity of simply having to find a new place when life has dealt you a bad hand. There is a kind of universality to A Terrible Place for a Nest then. An understanding that when things are going poorly, you can retain hope that you’ll find a home, even if it’s somewhere “terrible”. But this isn’t a book for just kids experiencing the kind of change that Juno is. Nature lovers will gravitate to this story. So too will fans of single mom stories, stories about moving in general, and people who need books that have happy endings. Hope is hard to write in a book. Hope is particularly hard to write in a picture book. Still, when someone gets it right, there’s nothing else like it. Maybe it’s true. Hope? It really is a thing with feathers.
On shelves now.
Source: Final copy sent for review from publisher.
Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2024, Review 2024, Reviews
About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
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Judy Weymouth says
I, too, have personal experience with robins and several mourning doves choosing what seem like unfortunate places for nest location. Memories include removal of nesting material over and over that failed to discourage the stubborn birds and as a result necessitated the need to completely block access to the chosen area.
An apparently desirable location for doves and robins was the area inside a piece of equipment where the hitch of our RV connected the trailer and truck. After unfortunately finding nests and eggs in that location more than once when we were ready to move, my husband designed a screen that made access impossible. For these birds it seemed a wonderful protected area quite safe from predators. I’m wondering if the locations chosen are actually smart from the birds’ point of view but our human needs conflict with theirs?
A TERRIBLE PLACE FOR A NEST is a great example of how an author might find ideas for a story. I will be interested in exploring the “weight and depth” developed around and expanded from an ordinary personal experience.