January 1, 2015 / Leslie

First Book of the Year – 2015

Happy New Year!

And welcome to First Book of the Year hosted by Sheila at Bookjourney.

My book choice – a true story about a bird sanctuary

I’m beginning the year with a book about one of my favorite topics – birds.

That’s Charlie in the photo with me. She is my reading and blogging buddy, and very curious about this book with the gorgeous cover. Regular visitors know I adopted Charlie from a bird rescue shelter. I’m also a volunteer at the shelter and a volunteer wild bird monitor for the forest preserve. If only I could get paid to do work I enjoyed!

The Birds of Pandemonium by Michele Raffin

Pandemonium, the home and bird sanctuary that Raffin shares with some of the world’s most remarkable birds, is a conservation organization dedicated to saving and breeding birds at the edge of extinction, with the goal of eventually releasing them into the wild. In The Birds of Pandemonium, she lets us into her world–and theirs. Birds fall in love, mourn, rejoice, and sacrifice; they have a sense of humor, invent, plot, and cope. They can teach us volumes about the interrelationships of humans and animals.

Their amazing stories make up the heart of this book. There’s Sweetie, a tiny quail with an outsize personality; the inspiring Oscar, a disabled Lady Gouldian finch who can’t fly but finds a brilliant way to climb to the highest perches of his aviary to roost. The ecstatic reunion of a disabled Victoria crowned pigeon, Wing, and her brother, Coffee, is as wondrous as the silent kinship that develops between Amadeus, a one-legged turaco, and an autistic young visitor.

The Birds of Pandemonium is about one woman’s crusade to save precious lives, and it offers rare insights into how following a passion can transform not only oneself but also the world.