It may be grey, but it’s GREAT!
The Grey Go-Away Bird by James Barker is an unusual and quirky looking book – the type we really like. So it immediately caught our eye when we spotted it on Twitter (no pun intended).
A predominantly grey book with pops of fantastic colour, you can’t help but give it a second look. Barker’s collage style illustrations are truly distinctive and like nothing we’ve seen anywhere before.
The Grey Go-Away Bird (or Corythaixoides con color) lives on a grey faraway island, and all of the other birds that inhabit the island have the most brightly coloured feathers you have ever seen, except for the Grey Go-Away Bird that is.
Because the Grey Go-Away Bird would blend into the grey background, the other birds often forgot about him and they forgot to invite him as they all flew off above the island, one afternoon.
Whilst the others flew off, the island has two gruesome visitors to the island and they were here to catch just one of the brightly coloured birds to make them rich. As the birds were perched in their grey trees, they were easy to find and the bird catchers swipe at them with their nets. The birds panic and fly off leaving their feathers behind them.
Enter the Grey Go-Away Bird to the rescue. He single-handedly scares off the evil bird catchers and rushes to tell the others. They soon realise they have a ‘grey-t’ friend in the bird and they make him a headdress from their fallen feathers.
A book about staying true to yourself and celebrating our differences, with some of the most unique illustrations we’ve seen. The message is executed in a new and varied way to most other books about this topic and it works excellently.
And look how it arrived from Cha Com Letras, beautifully packaged. Thank you.
picture books blogger 
Wow. This looks and sounds amazing.
It really is a beauty!