Zetta Elliott burst onto the children's publishing scene with a Lee & Low New Voices Award and the acclaimed 2008 picture book for
older readers Bird, the moving story of a boy's close relationship with his troubled older brother.
But the AP also deserves credit for fashioning mostly
old information into a highly readable story, particularly the first half of the piece (the part everyone seems to have digested), which is a tour de force of sensational stuff, full of
birds being ignited and singed and falling from the sky, with very little tedious detail or complexity to encumber the astonished
reader.