An Ode to the Night: A Bird’s Lullaby By Khadija Naeem
Published: 28 March 2023
Blog by CLMC students Khadija Naeem
Some of our best childhood memories include falling asleep as we listen to lullabies and waking up to the songs of the birds fluttering outside our window. But have you ever wondered how birds sleep? Do they also sing a lullaby before sleeping? A Bird’s Lullaby /Пташина колискова, written by the Ukrainian author Oksana Lushchevska, illustrated by Svetlana Balukh and published in 2017 by Chitarium publishers, invites children and adults to listen to bird songs and to learn about birds in this aesthetically pleasing book.
Oksana Lushchevska is a children's writer, translator, publicist, and researcher of children's and adolescent literature. Children’s books by Lushchevska repeatedly made the short lists of the “BBC Book of the Year” and “LitAccent of the Year” contests, and were highly evaluated by the experts of the BaraBuka Ukrainian Children's Book Space. In 2017, Wind from the Sun appeared in the prestigious catalogue of the 200 best children's books in the world “White Ravens”. Luschevska’s prose and poetry are included in the Textbook of Modern Ukrainian Children’s Literature. and also in many periodicals and anthologies, including the anthology AZ, Two, Three... Twelve - A Letter in a Bottle, Red and Black: One Hundred Ukrainian Female Poets of the 20th Century, as well as numerous collections and magazines for children.
On her website, Lushchevska expresses her love for birds. She is fond of taking their photographs and one of her dreams is to see a Kakapo owl parrot. She thinks a lullaby sung by a bird can make anyone fall asleep, as her own description of Bird’s Lullaby suggests:
The cuckoo falls asleep: ku-ku. The sparrow rolls its eyes: chirp-chirp. When all the birds are fast asleep, a velvet blanket of the starry sky is spread over them. This cosy lullaby will lull even the smallest bird to sound sleep and with her the small readers (lushchevska.com, 2017).
This book is written in free verse because Lushchevska considers poetry to be part of classical Ukrainian literature and is useful for engaging young readers in the modern world. In one of her interviews with “Korydor” magazine, she mentions that Ukrainians consider themselves a poetic nation, and that their language is like the musical notes of a nightingale. In the case of this book, it adds warmth and a sense of pleasure to the bird sounds.
Svetlana Balukh is the artist who provides the beautiful illustrations for the book, using warm colours and a combination of drawing and embroidery. As the author introduces different birds in each spread and the text replicates their call, the illustrator presents each bird on a different background and includes trees, leaves, flowers, stars and the sky. The vibrant backgrounds become darker as the day ends, moving from earthy beige and light blue tones as twilight comes to purple and darker blues, creating a sense of a long day reaching its end.
These warm background hues provide a contrast for the brightly coloured birds and flowers, thus attracting the visual senses of the reader. The embroidered display gives a naturalistic ambience to the book, capturing colours and movement and the reader can engage with the birds and their sounds as it becomes time to rest.
The raven croaks to announce its tiredness and the magpie chucks twice before closing its eyes. Then the cuckoo, the sparrow and the rest of the birds produce their own sounds as their eyes also begin to close. The bunting is sitting on a tree of blueberries swinging with the evening breeze, murmuring, ‘chip, chip’. A couple of tits and a woodpecker share an oak tree to get some rest. The woodpecker clucks slowly after the exertion of the day and the tits comfort each other by singing the song of sleep.
Sitting on a tree of pomegranate, the robin and goldfinch look at each other. The robin chuckles, ´tik, tik´ communicating the arrival of night and the goldfinch nods, ‘tit-tili’. As the sky darkens, the swallow gurgles, ‘chir, chir’ and the nightingale whistles, ‘tok, tok’. The pigeon coos, hiding its head under the wings and, like the others, falls asleep just as the stars begin to appear.
The canvas is now black, although there are still colourful threads between the constellations of white stars depicting different birds in deep slumber. Only one bird has its eyes wide open: an owl.
The book is recommended on the website of “Osvitoria”, a Ukrainian educational online platform that was created to suggest soothing materials for children during times of war. It also gives parents and guardians a chance to enjoy the simple beauties of life with children, such as giving life to bird songs that might lessen the chaotic sounds of war.
Book Details
A Bird’s Lullaby (Пташина колискова)
Oksana Lushchevska (auth.) and Svitlana Balukh (illust.)
Kharkiv: Chitarium, 2017
First published: 28 March 2023