111000 ( )

The author, Mya-Rose Craig, has been birding with her family around the world since a very young age, like 6 years old! She is an exceptional young woman, who has become a spokesperson for inclusion of minorities in nature, is an activist for climate change, and who created her own charitable organization, Black2Nature, when she was 14 years old. Oh yeah, she's visited 7 continents and seen more than 5,000 species of birds, more than half of the 10,000 different species in the world. She is only now 20 years old. While doing all of this, she has lived with a mother who suffers from bipolar depression, which has colored all of the adventures in her young life. Fascinating read. ( )

Mya-Rose Craig is an exceptional young woman, an environmental activist and champion for inclusiveness, and member of the white male dominated worldwide ‘twitching community’–the British term for a bird watcher. Although, watching isn’t quite the right word. I am a bird watcher. I notice birds all the time, note new ones to me in a book. Craig’s family traveled across the world for a glimpse of rare birds! Craig had visited all the continents before she had graduated high school. Bird watching was their joy, and it was therapeutic for Craig’s mother as it helped her cope with bipolar disorder.

Craig has accumulated a massive, world-wide following on social media as Birdgirl. Now twenty, her first book is out, a memoir about birds, family, and growing up.

Craig struggled to fit in; her mother is Bangladeshi, and the family bird obsession and her encyclopedic knowledge set her apart from her peers.

As a teenager, she organized the Black to Nature camp and created a Race Equality and Nature Conference. She has received an honorary PhD, so you can call her Dr. Craig.

The bulk of the memoir takes us with her family as they twitch, locally in Britain and across the world, including South America, Africa, America, Indonesia, and Antarctica. Each chapter begins with a drawing and profile of a bird they hoped to see.

Craig describes the hardships the family endured and the joys of discovering a rare and beautiful, often threatened species. Craig’s personal and family struggles are interspersed. She also documents how her family supported her to accomplish what she could imagine. None of it came easily.

The message of the memoir is one of empowerment and an impassioned plea to protect our beautiful and fragile world.

Thanks to Celadon Books for an ARC. ( )