From Barnes & Noble
The story behind the publication of Nancy Yi Fan's Swordbird is nearly as enthralling as the book itself. A Chinese-born preteen living in New York, Fan channeled her lifelong fascination with birds and her concerns over war and terrorism into an exuberant sword-and-sorcery-styled fantasy two years in the writing. She then emailed the completed manuscript to HarperCollins…and the rest, as they say, is history. This allegorical tale of warring birds and their struggle for freedom has attracted an unusual measure of attention because of the author's young age. But there is nothing childish about Fan's innate gift for pacing, characterization, or storytelling. We predict many more successes for this talented prodigy.
From the Publisher
The blue jays and cardinals of Stone-Run Forest have turned against each other. According to legend, only Swordbird, son of the Great Spirit, has the power to conquer evil and restore peace to the land.
Teenage author Nancy Yi Fan weaves a captivating tale about the heroism, courage, and resourcefulness in the birds of Stone-Run's quest for peace.
Publishers Weekly
As any fan of Brian Jacques's Redwall saga knows, the forest is teeming with societies of animals that have complicated dynamics. Thirteen-year-old author Yi Fan's debut novel joins the genre with her tale told from the birds' vantage point, translated handily to audio by Delaney. The narrator's steady, assured delivery paints a captivating fantasy world for listeners, replete with feathered heroes and villains. Turnatt, the tyrant hawk, forces his enslaved woodbird subjects to steal eggs and food from both the blue jays and the cardinals, causing the two bird tribes to blame each other and go to war. But when a neutral party reveals Turnatt's plan, the warring factions join forces to seek out the Swordbird, Son of the Great Spirit, the only true hope to help them restore peace. Though listeners may have trouble differentiating Delaney's bird character voices, adventure, action and allegory abound here, helping this recording to take wing. A bonus interview with the author is included. Ages 10-up. (Feb.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Children's Literature
Nancy Yi Fan was eleven when she began writing Swordbird. The story grew from a dream she had following class discussions of the Revolutionary War, terrorism, and 9/11. Wheeling freely through the viewpoints of multiple characters and beyond, this is the story of a society of birds in the grip of an ongoing feud. The blue jays and cardinals have been squabbling for generations, but now a tyrannical hawk is using slave-catchers to escalate the conflict in the pursuit of absolute power. When Aska of the Bluewingle tribe meets the slavebird Miltin, the resulting small steps toward freedom lead eventually to a great battle and the triumph of sacrifice and heroism. This writing has a youthful exuberance. The reach of the story is vast and courageous. Its precocious accomplishment is evident in the invention of "somebird" and "anybird" as pronouns, and in somber yet ingenuous revelations ("...every egg was bought with scars and bruises") about the marauding hawk Turnatt's past. Elsewhere, the writer's age shows more plainly. Bean soup and raspberry pie overcome armed raiders. Aska exhorts the blue jays to take risks "with a determined tone in her voice." Yet the same flat delivery renders sharply sinister the scene in which Turnatt wantonly kills a raven. Mark Zug's black-and-white drawings repeat strategically, offering a visual underpinning to the characters and story line. In balance, even given the quirky and unpredictable nature of childhood writing, this young writer seems a natural word bird. With luck, despite her rise to early international fame, she will successfully negotiate the complex choreography of writing and life that would seem to be foreshadowed by this debut.
VOYA
The cardinals and blue jays are at war. Strangely enough, they were friends a short while ago, but accusations of egg theft made them enemies. Little did they know that sinister, one-eyed hawk Turnatt stole and ate the eggs to feed his insatiable need for everlasting life. He enlisted an avian army and then enslaved other birds to do his bidding. When the sparring birds learn about the conspiracy behind their sudden animosity, they conclude that the mythical Swordbird might be their only hope for a truce. Swordbird, a white bird and guardian of peace, can be summoned with a song and a gem. The bird tribes send delegates Aska, a blue jay, and Miltin, a robin, across the dangerous White Cap Mountains on a quest for one of the eight known Leasorn gems in existence. Now living in the U.s., Chinese-born, first-time author Fan began writing this novel when she was twelve years old. She conjures an intricate bird cosmology and hierarchy as a background to the overall plot. The book moves swiftly from chapter to chapter with help from sheer brevity, copious action scenes, and illustrations. Novice readers will enjoy the large text and generous spacing and margins. Advanced readers can muse over the novel's allegorical nature and literary allusions. The author provides a list of major characters to help keep up with the sizeable cast. Aficionados of Jacques's Redwall series should enjoy this new offering to the anthropomorphized animal genre.
Elizabeth BirdCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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School Library Journal
Gr 4–6
The Stone-Run Country is in peril. The blue jays' Bluewingle tribe and their former friends, the cardinals of the Sunrise tribe, have gone to war. Each side believes the other to have stolen its food and eggs, little suspecting the malicious hawk, Turnatt, along with his hoard of crows and ravens. Now he is intent on forcing all of the local woodbirds to work on his magnificent fortress, and it's up to a variety of brave avians to upset the villain's plans. Their only hope lies in summoning the great warrior, Swordbird, to assist them in their time of need. Fan wrote the book when she was 11 as a response to a world at war; it goes without saying that she is very talented. However, the book essentially reuses old tropes in a new setting, making the plot, pacing, and characters more than a little predictable and, for all of its charms, the story is overly familiar. Dialogue runs to the clunky with lines like, "I'll get you, me and my crew will" and "You'll pay for that, scalawag!" The greatest credit should be given to the illustrator, who took the author's imagery and made it believable as well as attractive.
Kirkus Reviews
Turnatt, a corrupt hawk, sets out to take over the Stone Run Forest and all its feathered denizens by drafting crows and ravens to do his dirty work and by using those recruits to enslave and divide the forest's bird communities. With the help of an escaped slave, the jays, cardinals, robins and a hot-air balloon full of traveling birds mount a spirited opposition to the forces of evil in their world. This avian fantasy is an engaging and propulsive read, but as often happens with debut novels, style is not the strong point. Fantasy elements are both derivative and inconsistent, making the narrative into an extended fairytale with a few realistic birdlike trappings. Occasional stilted dialogue, unadorned prose and a derivative plot detract from the unusual use of birds as the focus of the story. Fan, currently a seventh grader in China, began Swordbird when she was ten years old-an extraordinary accomplishment for a young author. It will appeal to fans of the Mistmantle Chronicles and other animal fantasies-then lead them onward to Redwall Abbey. (Fantasy. 9-12)
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