Speed Birds

by Alan Snow

When a young crow witnesses the breath-taking speed of the world's fastest bird, the peregrine falcon, he is entranced and dreams travelling just as fast. Fuelled by his imagination and self belief, he works with his fellow crows to build an incredible car, the Speed Bird, and attempts to go faster than any bird has gone before. An inspirational story about working as a team and pursuing your dreams - which also contains easily accessible information about how cars work. Perfect for young readers and can be enjoyed by car enthusiasts of all ages. This stylish and beautiful book is the perfect gift.

48 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2018

About the author

Alan Snow is a prolific English author and illustrator, celebrated for his intricate visual storytelling. After studying at Salisbury College of Art, he illustrated over 160 books and contributed to animation and video game design. He is most famous for the Ratbridge Chronicles, particularly the 2005 novel Here Be Monsters!. This richly illustrated work, set in a fantastical Victorian world, inspired the 2014 Academy Award-nominated stop-motion film The Boxtrolls.

Reviews

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clearly I am in the minority here but I thought this book was brilliant. The graphic illustrations are awesome and the humour of the crows doing this absurdly practical thing was deliciously wry and humorous. The information delivery was not a bit patronizing or preachy or dull.
I am a mom with a Technology degree so maybe I am a bit biased, but I love to find informative illustrated books that demand something from you and still deliver a good 'read'. I do not know much about modern cars, but curiosity is universal and this books tone seemed delightful rather than talking down to you, the reader.
It has something to give readers at many ages and I could see it being used as a resource with much older children. I loved the crows willingness to embrace the impossible and just get on with doing it.
It is great.

[Tim Roast · Rating 4 out of 5]

My 4-year-old son loves cars. Ever since he was young he's been enthralled by them. I got this book for him as it is about cars.

The story follows a young crow with a white feather in his tail who is taught at a young age that "if you stay curious, use your mind, and believe in yourself, there is no limit to what you can achieve out there."

Indeed this crow does achieve amazing things especially considering he is a crow. First he sees a falcon and is fascinated by its speed which can reach 242 mph. "Flying that fast must be the best feeling ever. I'd give anything to be the fastest bird in the world!"

One day it comes the "time for the young and adventurous to set out into the world and build a life elsewhere." The young crow leads a group of others to a scrap yard where inside a shed there were "tools, machines, car parts, and there were large drawings of a type of car the crows had never seen before." "If we just follow these instructions, we can go faster than we ever dreamed of... Faster even than a falcon."

So the crows become mechanics and the small crow becomes a driver of a fast car, and the story takes you through the bits of a car, complete with labelled diagrams, and how a car works as they build. Another Amazon reviewer coined the book as "a junior Haynes manual for crows".

My son listened as I read this and he liked it. There were diagrams of bits of a car (he liked pointing at these and reading the part names), but we haven't been out to our own car to compare against that engine, and the stuff in here was still quite complicated (although maybe that is the nature of engines). If you asked me now how an engine works I'd still struggle to answer (although I'd give a better stab than prior to reading this book). Maybe my 4-year-old son could do better than me.

Anyway this book is designed for car nuts of which my son is one and he enjoyed. We may well refer to this book again because of the car mechanic-y parts.

[Mr Bramley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely a good book that I may use in the future.

The art style isn’t my favourite but I can imagine it inspiring children and creating lots of conversation.
The subject content is also more of a specialist subject for children who are already interested in cars.

It is quite detailed and tricky to follow so would recommend for older children of adult led reading.

[Wilde Sky · Rating 3 out of 5]

A young crow (with the help of his friends) sets out to build a fast car.

This was an odd but enjoyable story.

Reading time around thirty minutes.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely love this story of a bunch of crows successfully reached their dream. Sky is the limit.

[Natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always maintain that the best way to retain information is through story. Give me lists of facts and it will fall right out of my brain like cake flour through a sieve. But give me story and I will remember it in great detail forever - like when I learnt about frog physiology by listening to my lecturer remember his days at school when his friends and him chose to race frogs and he used his knowledge of biology to choose the frog that would win in endurance and speed. Anyways, I digress. Speed Birds by Alan Snow is a fictional tale about a bunch of crows that want to beat the world record for fastest bird (a record currently held by falcons) by building a race car from scratch. Through the story, you learn about how to build a car - from all the various parts to assembling an engine. You also learn about how to calculate speed traveled, how to improve aerodynamics to go faster, and other less tangible things like the importance of perseverance and hard work. There are even detailed engineering drawings of car parts and how to assemble a race car. My little 2 year old picked out this book because he is obsessed with cars and their mechanics and I never in a million years thought that he would sit through the entire reading because it is a long and detailed book. Boy was I wrong. He wants us to read it to him over and over again and he even wants to go through every little detail in the diagrams (it even gives me a headache sometimes because I am not interested in building a car) and he can now point out parts of an engine, and how they all fit together. I am once again taught to never underestimate children because their beautiful minds are ripe for learning and with care and attention, can become experts in anything.