posted on 22 Jun 2020

The Bird Fancier by Helen Cresswell, illustrated by Renate Meyer

Published in 1971, Helen Cresswell’s The Bird Fancier is an unsettling magical tale that benefits from some extraordinarily evocative illustration by Renate Meyer, who was the wife of that other master children’s book artist, Charles Keeping.

Tom has just turned down the chance to join his friend Greg in getting up to mischief in town with a catapult is now wondering the streets worrying that he’ll get labelled a ‘sissy’ for not wanting to get into trouble. As he drifts through town he stumbles on a man crouching on the pavement feeding the birds with various bags of seeds. When the man throws his feed into the air it arcs in an almost magical rainbow onto the street and the birds converge on the seeds in a way Tom has never seen before. It’s as if they all blend together to form one big single bird – it’s something the boy has never witnessed before and he’s transfixed. ‘I’m a bird fancier’ the man tells him.

When the man moves on to go to his next feeding site, Tom has to follow. Who is this man? In the park he finds the right bench and the old man decides to let Tom see something very special indeed:

“He stooped and took a handful of grain from the other bag this time, the green one. A curve of gold seed sped from hand to turf…Tom looked at the Bird Fancier whose face was alive and suddenly different….”

Tom can’t quite make out what’s happening but the grains and the birds seem to merge and dissolve and when Tom himself gets a chance to throw a handful of seed, suddenly flocks of colourful birds – like none he’d ever seen before in his life – whirl around them in a cascade of colour.

Tom can’t get enough of this and keeps plunging his hand into the bag of feed, throwing it whirling onto the ground as brightly coloured swarms of exotic birds circle him.

But then the man is ready to move to his next pitch, the train terminus in Station Street, where Tom lives! This, the man tells him, is his last pitch – ‘I shall be getting along soon’.

Tom again throws out the seeds from the bags the Bird Fancier puts on the ground and again a flurry of magical birds appear. Tom is seized by a desire to catch one of the beautiful creatures………..

But the result isn’t quite what he expected and I’m not going to reveal the end now in case you want to read this mysterious tale for yourself.

Helen Cresswell’s story is about the magic that is to be found in even the very ordinary looking – how the natural world can provide wonders even if you think you live in a dull, dirty town with nothing much to do but walk the streets. You don’t have to destroy things to get your kicks, the magic lies in creating beauty.

Renate Meyer’s illustrations are fantastic – deep colours and full page solid illustrations often drawn from odd and unusual angles and lines of vision. This is a fantastic example of the symbiosis between the word and the image when it comes to telling stories.

Unaccountably, the book seems to have been out of print for some time now and just a few copies can be found on the second hand market but fortunately they are not prohibitively expensive. In the absence of a reprint, you should get a copy soon before this remarkable book becomes impossible to get hold of.

 

Terry Potter

June 2020

 

(Click on any illustration to view in a slide show format)