A review by rebecca_oneil
Sparrow Girl by Sara Pennypacker

4.0

Kudos to another picture book that tells a seldom-told story, because I'd never heard the story of the Sparrow War: in 1958, Chairman Mao Tse-Tung decided that sparrows were eating too much of China's wheat crop, and ordered all the citizens (kids too) to go out and make as much noise as possible, to scatter the sparrows and, quite literally, scare them to death. Using firecrackers and noisemakers, the planned worked too well -- without the sparrows, locusts ate the crops, contributing to a famine that killed millions of Chinese during the following years.

This harrowing historical event is told through the smaller story of Ming-Li, a little girl whose love for birds causes her to save seven sparrows and win the respect of her father and his fellow farmers, once they realize that the sparrows had been necessary to control other pests.

"The sky is crying birds."